On day three of our NYC trip, we started off by walking down to south street seaport. Here there are restaurants and tourist spots along the water. But we went to check out the discounted ticket spot. A small store front TKTS shows you what broadway shows have discounts for same day tickets. Several of the more expensive multi-tony award winning musicals we wanted to see were on the board.

We asked about prices  and were quoted the best seats for the best prices. L decided then to surprise me and bought us tickets for The King and I as a early birthday present.

The seats were front and center 7 rows back from the orchestra, and we got them 40% off, which means we paid what it would have cost for one of us to get that seat regularly.

After, we went back to our hotel to strategize our downtown tour.  We bought a group-on online that gave us a discount for a hop-on-hop off uptown, downtown, and a night double decker bus tour for one day.

It was a little cold and windy on the top of the bus but it was best for viewing. We drove north up the upper east side following part of Central Park. Along the way we saw the Lincoln preforming arts center, where we would be going later that evening for our musical.

We came up around the top of the park and into Harlem, passing the Apollo theater and several other landmarks. Then turning South we headed back towards the park and museum row.

We decided to get off at the New York City Museum, which was free with our bus tickets. Coming inside to warm up we enjoyed a few floors of touring exhibits everything from portraits of early settlers, to a display documenting the protests and social changes in the city through time. The most interesting aspect of the museum was  a 30 minute video which narrated the history of the city from its time as a dutch colony to post 9-11.

Then we planed to head to the Rockefeller center. But the bus took more than 45 minutes to get to us. Once we got on museum row we trudge through rush hour traffic.

We were told that the buses would start their last tour at 5pm. What we were not aware of was that the buses would return no matter where they were on the tour at 5pm. So by the time we got done with museum row, we were headed back to times square. This gave us no chance to explore central park or see the Rockefeller center.

By that time we realized it was getting late and we needed to get dinner, go back to the hotel, change and head back up for our evening musical.

More on our evening to come.