Wednesday in NYC

New York City has fabulous public spaces and amazing architecture. Wednesday we headed out to see Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library and anything else interesting along the way.
This place is like a city unto itself! There's a whole food court one level down.





























From Grand Central we walked a few blocks to the Chrysler building and went into the lobby. You needed to go through security to access the elevators (and probably have business on upper floors)...so we just enjoyed the lobby...which was smaller than I would have expected.


Mural on the ceiling of the lobby.












From the Chrysler Building we retraced our steps to the library (which wasn't open when we first went by). This building was amazing
and huge!










Once inside, I suggested to AB that maybe she should look up the person she was researching for National History Day to see if the east coast had any resources she couldn't locate on the west coast. So, she looked on the computer and sure enough, there was a book written by Jessie Benton Fremont that AB hadn't been able to find in Seattle. So we approached the librarian and he directed us to another room to apply for an access card (a card needed access the research libraries). Once we had access card in hand, we proceeded to the Genealogy and American History room. Here we gave a slip of paper indicating the book she was looking for and her table location to the librarian and they told us to take a seat and they would bring the book to AB. A few minutes later, a nice gentleman gave AB a book in a protective cover. Once she unwrapped it, we noticed the binding had the date '1865' on it...this was one old book! So AB read for a while, I played with my phone and the boys decided to find some thing more interesting to do.










Okay, so it wasn't that fascinating to some of our party.

So the boys went here...to the aircraft carrier, the Intrepid. Best known by us as the place Nicholas Cage jumped off of in "National Treasure". I'm sure it has other historical significance too but I don't know it as I was back at the library, shopping in Macy's and a yarn store and walking in the pouring rain with my daughter! The boys had a great time too! Sometimes you just have to split up!

Later that evening we saw the Alfred Hitchcock story, "The 39 Steps". This show was hilarious with only 4 actors playing all the roles. It had super sound, lighting and other effects and we laughed a lot! I always like when I can laugh at Alfred Hitchcock!

Tuesday in NYC

Yes, you're right!

This was the day we went to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We got up early and rode the subway all the way to the end of Manhattan to get in line for tickets for the boat as well as those that allow you to go to the top of the statue. GB had read that if you go too late, they run out of tickets and then you can only admire the statue from the park below. We had no trouble getting tickets and made it over on the second boat of the morning. The view was spectacular and the weather beautiful.

Once we made it through a second security screening, we encountered a wonderful National Park employee who was very friendly and took this photo of us.

The viewing platform at the base of the statue is still quite a hike of stairs up but once up there, you get a very unique view of the statue, including inside the structure.

This was in the museum leading up to the statue stairs.

Inside the lady...

Once we were done on Liberty Island (when AB pulled out her book), we made our way back to the boat for the short cruise over to Ellis Island. After disembarking here, we ate lunch outside in the sunshine and then investigated the place where so many immigrated to the U.S. We did look up my maiden name in the computer but we didn't find any matches.

Finally, everyone's brains were full of facts so we took the boat back to the city.

After a snack of hot nuts and a popsicle from a street vendor in the park, we headed to Wall Street (it was 5 pm-ish and the natives were trying to make their way to the trains and home - all with crazy tourists in their way!), the World Trade Center Memorial (which they are still building; the visitor center was closing for the day so we didn't see too much there.) and Trinity Church (where they filmed "National Treasure". It had a very cool cemetary and AB pointed out that the some of the dates were very old!)






New York Stock Exchange building

We hadn't seen the Brooklyn Bridge except from afar so we walked to Seaport and GB took some photos of the bridge. Finally, after a day of walking, we headed to the subway and back to our hotel.

For dinner, GB & I ventured out and found a little deli in Times Square with great meatball subs. We brought them back to our starving children and we all feasted in our room.

More tomorrow!

Monday in NYC

The one thing I notice about being home is the pace. New York seems to function at warp speed. From the subway trains that fly into the station, with you standing mere feet away, to the folks hurrying and scurrying to their destinations on the sidewalk. Only the tourists seem to move slowly and stop at street corners for red no-walk signs. We learned to walk if no cars were coming and stay in the flow of the sidewalk traffic.

On Monday morning we ate breakfast (this one was free, came with the room!), packed up, stored our luggage and headed out to see NYU, since it was just on the other side of the park from our hotel. We found the bookstore and the kids both found souvenirs. They had quite a selection of film school and performing arts books.
From NYU we walked over to SOHO and found the Apple Store and other interesting shopping. I checked my handy iPhone and discovered that Purl (a yarn store) was nearby so we walked until we found it. It wasn't open when we arrived so we waited about 10 minutes and then I browsed while my family paced outside. This place was tiny but had some nice yarn that was dyed locally in lobster pots. I had to pass though because it was cashmere and $46 a skein!
(Not sure what the bags in the photo contain but I'm pretty sure they aren't filled with yarn! Didn't even see them when we were there...I was too busy window shopping!)

Our doorman at the hotel had told us to be sure to visit Katz Deli for lunch so we headed there next. We found it and headed inside for pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, piled high! This is the restaurant where Harry met Sally and the scene you all remember was filmed. We had a good lunch, met one of the owners and then were off again to see more of the city.

On the subway, we decided to split up and the boys went off to find the B&H store (audio, video, and all things EB & GB love!) while AB and I headed to Times Square. Our goal for the day was to get tickets for a show that night from the TKTS stand. The ticket booth didn't open till 3 but we were told to get there early. The shows were even going to be posted until 2:30, so AB and I decided to find our hotel and see if we could check in early. We turned around and found the hotel right across the street! So we checked in, rested our feet, twittered our friends, called the boys and then headed back out to stand in the wind for tickets to Avenue Q.

The boys returned and found us still standing in line about 3:15. They headed off to our other hotel to retrieve the luggage. They took a cab back and said it zipped them right there...a whole lot easier than trying to take everything back on the subway, I think! Meanwhile, AB & I scored third row tickets at half the price and we were off to see our first Broadway show!

30th floor of Doubletree Hotel-view from room

We all met back up at the room and relaxed before heading off to dinner. Again, my iPhone and the reviews on Yelp and Urbanspoon helped find a place for dinner. Carmine's is a nice Italian restaurant that served family style and had paintings of famous people on its walls. The correct answer, by the way, was Jimmy Durante (in answer to AB's twitter question. Thanks for playing!)

The show was fabulous. A bit raunchy at times - full puppet nudity as advertised and a love scene we'll not soon forget. But we all laughed and laughed and had a great time!

New York City...A Retrospective

Okay, I struggled with how to capture all the activity and fun we had in New York so here's my plan...we'll see if I can actually do it!

Every day this week, I'll add a 'Where were we last week?' post. Hopefully, GB will keep feeding me photos by the day (we took over 800!) and this will work.

Friday, Mar 27 - We left Seattle around 3 pm and boarded a plane for Newark, New Jersey. As usual, the flight was late and we arrived around 1 am on the East Coast. By the time we found the right airport shuttle and made it to our nearby airport hotel, it was nearly 2 am and we were all exhausted but eager to get to sleep and get to the CITY in the morning!

Saturday, Mar 28 - We were up and headed to breakfast by 9:45 as they stopped serving it at 10 am. We hurriedly ate what we thought was a 'free' hotel breakfast only to find out it ran $15 per person...quite a lot for cereal, muffins and juice! Welcome to New...wait, this is still New Jersey!

After packing up and arranging for a taxi into New York, we made it to our next hotel near Greenwich Village and stored our luggage.

(We were on the third floor of the building on the end - Washington Park Hotel.)

We then headed to the subway (uptown!) and after buying metro cards and figuring out which way is 'up', we were headed to Rockefeller Center. Here we wandered around and bought tickets for the NBC tour for the next day (they were sold out for Saturday.)
























Since the weather was good, we decided we should go up the Empire State Building so we hopped another subway train and got in line for the tallest building in NYC. The view was great and really helped us get oriented.

We finished the day with pizza in our hotel room. Our feet needed the rest!



























AB twittering (tweeting?) at the top!












Sunday, Mar 29 - Today we headed to MOMA (or the Museum of Modern Art or as EB describes it, one room after another of weird stuff!) Needless to say, AB loved it as she's had some art history and recognized many things in the museum. EB had fun with the building itself, taking photos from different vantage points while wandering around looking at the weird stuff!














































After the museum we grabbed some lunch and took our NBC tour. The kids were thrilled to see the Nightly News and Saturday Night Live sets. We would have pictures but you had to check your firearms and swear you'd take no photos during the tour!

We finished the day near our hotel at a used/new bookstore - Strand - that advertised 18 Miles of Books - we all poked around and found a few treasures. We then went for burgers at a place called "Stand"...don't worry they let us sit. Heading back to our hotel we got caught in a fantastic thunderstorm!

That was the weekend...more tomorrow!