Macy’s Thanksgiving parade 2016

Another year, another Thanksgiving parade. However, this one was, for us, the best yet. This was the 90th year of the Macy’s parade, though I am not sure they treated it any differently.  We raised ourselves earlier than usual (the parade starts on West 77th street at 9am but the crowds build up quickly so you need to be there as early as possible). Instead of just standing in the busy side street thinking it was about the best we could do, as we have in years gone by, we filtered through the crowds and discovered that the sidewalks on Central Park West had plenty of standing room! In addition, I took a small folding step so I gained an extra 6-8″ of height. We were able to see the bands (which are truly vast – who knew so many could play the Euphonium). We saw the floats and even the scary clowns – why are there always scary clowns? Many of the floats have “celebrities” – meaning people who I don’t know. However, the wonderful Mr Tony Bennett made an appearance and waved at us, much to my great delight. The weather was perfect, not too cold and a little overcast (which is good when facing east).

As always, the parade culminates with Santa on his sleigh which takes about 40 years off my age as I yell and wave like an idiot to get his attention… Unlike the little girl in “A miracle on 34th street”, which we watched later that day, I don’t need to be convinced… Happy Thanksgiving!