Christmas Eve with my mouth open

Not disappointed by my fifth visit to New York is an understatement. I was almost moved to tears at the famous toy store FAO Schwartz this afternoon. It is kid heaven. Heaven. There are giant stuffed animals that are practically life-sized. A woolly mammoth will cost obliging parents or grandparents $12,000. That’s US dollars. They still have the “Big” piano that Tom Hanks played on during the movie of the same name. They do this show, with two animators hopping to familiar tunes, and then they invite the kids (and adults!) to give it a whirl. $250,000 if you want to play at home.

But there are more things. There’s a huge section devoted to dolls that is mind-blowing. You can make any doll you want. You can buy designer dolls for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then, because every little girl knows that the biggest dream is to become a doll oneself (and, mostly, wear her clothes), there’s the costume section with every article required to become a real princess. Only kid sizes, though.

The “boys” side has a human-sized Chewbacca made of Lego. There’s also Batman, the grizzly guy from Lord of the Rings, and a downtown skyline, all out of Lego. There’s an outdoor game that apparently “combines basketball, volleyball and a trampoline”. It’s pretty big. There’s also some kind of rocket simulator the size of my kitchen. Are you getting all of this? In a toy store.

Anyway. I could go on naming every game of laser tag, carpet skates, antique automatons and multitude of dinosaurs I saw, but what for? You must go. It’s just past the giant, glowing Apple logo seemingly floating in a glass box the size of a small house. Yes, right next the Apple Store, that’s right.

Maybe my senses were heightened because I had just come from Barney’s. Oh my God. You know, I don’t really like to shop. I have some childhood trauma (thanks, Dad) about spending money (“fine, spend the money, but first, you must pass this 98-question test about whether it’s really worth it”). And in particular, I’m not a good clothes shopper. I like my clothes like I like my food: bland. Or so I thought. Until I ran into a $300 flowy blouse that I *might* want to wear sometime, with the skinny jeans I don’t own, and some $200 ballet slipper shoes I also don’t own. But wouldn’t it be great?

Honestly, I never thought I liked clothes that much until I saw these. For these, I would break my previous “single most expensive item of clothing I own” record, which now stands at US$130 (and was totally worth it).

Meanwhile, on my US$50 a day New York budget, I walked down to the flagship Louis Vuitton store on 5th Avenue to have a look at Olafur Eliasson’s window display. He’s a very up-and-coming Icelandic artist that works out of Germany, in case you didn’t know. Of course, I didn’t actually go into LV because there are some stores that I’m just not worthy of. When I went into Prada at the Bellagio, it required some major psych-ing up, and I’m on vacation here. I also looked at the incredibly theatrical window display at Bergdorf Goodman, and then headed across the street to Central Park to check out the skating rink.

I’m doing some recon of rinks, in case I decide to finally go skating. This one’s bigger than the one at Rockefeller Plaza, which is good. But it’s still a long line-up to skate around with lots of strangers.

My plan was to finish up the afternoon with It’s a Wonderful Life at the IFC Center but it was on too late. So I went to the Astoria instead and caught The Good German, by one of my favourite directors, Steven Soderbergh. It was awesome. At one point, my mouth was hanging open. Which pretty much sums up my first few days in the Big Apple, as some guy plays “Santa Claus is coming to town” on a sax and I get an energy vibe off the other tourists speaking 34 different languages, and forget that I’m even on vacation and that this is not my normal life.