Christmastime in the East

So I'm playing catch-up, just not all the way. ("Christmastime in the Southern Hemisphere" deserves its own post, which I'll get around to writing sometime soon. Maybe.) I've gotten to see a few different angles of Christmas in the east this year, namely of the DC and NYC variety.

For starters, we have largely missed the insane snowstorms that have been pummeling the east coast. There has been lots of snow in North Carolina and lots in New York...just not much around here. Instead, we just get a whole lot of freezing wind. That said, I did take advantage the first time we DID get a little snow...

I really couldn't help myself. Snow brings out the kid in me. But even without much snow, DC can be a magical place at Christmas.


We went to a show at the DC temple visitors center with some friends and got to see an impressive set of Nativity scenes from around the world that would have made Mom light up like a Christmas tree.

Despite the fact that it was bitter cold, we managed to take some pretty cool shots while David taught us all the concept of Bokeh.

See all the blurriness behind us? Voila. Bokeh.


As for the New York Christmas variety, we paid homage to the Chinatown bus yet again for David's birthday. The Chinatown choir was out and about, helping everyone to get into the Christmas spirit.


We got some tix at the very last second (read: steep, steep discount) for Lion King, which I've always wanted to see. The show is an audiovisual assault. In a very good way. It also made me nostalgic for the sights and sounds of Africa, and I kept leaning over to point out unimportant Africa/Swahili trivia to David, like that "mufasa" means mirage and "rafiki" means friend and that the concept of an elephant graveyard is actually pretty accurate because elephants will push all the bones to the same place and mourn their dead. He humored me though, because he's nice like that.

We also battled the crowd to get a glimpse of the Christmas tree in front of the Rockefeller Center.

We'd been considering the possibility of going ice skating there, but one glance at the line for ice skating told us that we should find another form of entertainment. So we decided to check out the city from the Top of the Rock. I recommend this. The view is spectacular, especially if you time it right...



And then there was that one time when I took David to see Gin Blossoms playing in the streets of New York for his birthday...

We stumbled upon this gem of a show while wandering the streets one night. Turns out, they were filming their show for New Years. On December 18. (And just like that, I'm suddenly skeptical of the timing of every Times Square New Years performance I've ever seen.) So even though I wasn't in New York for New Years, FOX has documentation to prove that I was. Guess I can check that experience off my list.