skabrat.com

The Saks Fifth Avenue store on Fifth between East 49th Street and East 50th Street has a holiday light show on the side of the building at night. Other great window displays include Bergdorf Goodman (on Fifth Avenue between East 57th Street and East 58th Street), Bloomingdale’s (on Lexington Avenue between East 59th Street and East 60th Street), and Tiffany & Co. (on Fifth Avenue at East 57th Street. The observatory at the new One World Trace Center (at 285 Fulton Street) is on the 101st floor and provides incredible views of the surrounding area. If you don’t want to go downtown, other sky high vantage points are in Midtown at the Empire State Building’s 102nd floor observatory (on Fifth Avenue between East 33rd Street and East 34th Street) and the Top of the Rock observation deck in Rockefeller Center.

Of course, the prices at any of the four star and five star resorts are very high also, such as $26 cocktails, $24 burgers, $45 breakfast buffets, and $5 cans of soft drinks. Flights to Papeete on Tahiti, the capital and main city of French Polynesia, leave late at night and take about 7 ½ hours. If you are traveling the same day to a resort on Bora Bora or another smaller island, which is what most travelers do, you’ll have to wait around the miniscule Papeete airport for a few hours, since flights to the other islands leave mid-morning. (During this trip I stayed at the Le Tahaa Island Resort and Spa, the Intercontinental Bora Bora Le Moana Resort, and the Intercontinental Moorea).

My guide’s name was Jose, and he was working with a young female dolphin named Aischa. Aischa had learned her dolphin encounter behaviors, but she sometimes disobeyed Jose and swam away to the other side of the lagoon to be with her boyfriend. Jose blew his whistle and in response Aischa swam up to me and held her position with her head out of the water until I smooched her. As instructed, I floated with my feet down in the water and held out my right arm while I put my left arm across my chest.