On our way out Friday we stopped at Washington Square to have lunch. It's a place filmed at several times in August Rush. (Which is a movie we both LOVE so thought it would be fun.)
It wouldn't be New York without street entertainment! These guys put on a fun show!
Even saw some real street basketball.
I wouldn't want to mess with that guy.
There's Trump Towers. Just another tall building in New York City!
Welcome to Central Park. We spent the rest of the day here. SOOOOO much to see.
Here's the famous Bow Bridge. This was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. We rented rowboats and paddled around the small lake for about an hour.
Christian was so much better at rowing than I was! He was nice to let me try! :)
There were so many turtles, birds, and ducks. Check out all the sunbathing turtles!
Christian sat on Hans Christian Anderson's lap and listened to a story.
The view of the park from Belveder Castle. This is a HUGE park!
We saw some kids having baseball practice, and couldn't get enough of all the beautiful plants and flowers there.
In Strawberry fields we saw the memorial dedicated to John Lennon. For dinner we headed right outside Central park to a place called Shake Shack! LOVED it!
Check out how tall those tulips are! Beautiful!
One last walk across bow bridge on our way out at night! I'm to the right of the crazy guy sitting in the middle.
Then it was off to the famous Serendipity! YUM! We enjoyed some frozen hot chocolate and frozen peanut butter chocolate. By the end of the night we were exhausted!
The subway system was seriously fascinating to me. Levels of subway. That's right, we are going down down down to the subway on a lower level!
Saturday started with heading to get some British fish and chips from a place called A Salt and Battery. Although tasty, we both felt pretty rotten afterward for a while. Maybe it was the deep fried candy bar (a Lion Bar) we had for dessert? :) Oops!Then it was off to the Empire State Building.
The elevator goes up so fast!Here are a couple of views from up top. It's crazy how many tall buildings are packed into so little space! Makes me feel like I live in the country, way out in the boonies back home!
They said that on a clear day you can see 80 miles! Well, we couldn't see that far, but it was still amazing!
How did this picture work? Any science nerds out there? (It's not that tricky actually, but I thought it was pretty cool.)
After taking the subway without fail all week long we were pretty confused to end up near Katz's deli when we thought we would be clear down by ground zero. Oh well, can't pass up a highly recommended sandwich shop!
I wasn't hungry enough to eat that HUGE of a sandwich so I just had a couple pieces of Christian's pastrami and a black and white cookie! (A very popular cookie in NY) It was all seriously delicious!
Next, we figured out the differences of the subway for Saturdays and headed down ground zero. This is what they are in the process of building!
This is what it looks like now!
The picture below of the completed building is the one to the right of the tallest one in the "done" photo below.
It's going to look amazing when it's all completed in 2035! (Here's what they are planning it to look like.) That's how long it's all going to take if they continue at the speed they are going now. They are hoping that the economy picks up and and helps to speed that process up as well. The memorials should be done in about a year and half though.
Here are some real palm trees growing in New York, brought in from Florida, in the World Financial Center across from the site of ground zero.
Somewhere on our walk up to Wall Street from the World Financial Center.
Heading up to Wall Street we saw yet another gorgeous church and cemetery.
Welcome to Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange!
There's that church we saw on our way in.
Then it was off to Times Square one last time.
We weren't there long before we started looking for a place to have some dinner. Times Square on Saturday was even more busy than we'd seen it earlier in the week. At least 50% more people! And there were firetrucks and police cars trying to head up the street behind a million taxi's. After crossing the street here one of the firetrucks turned onto it behind us. Then only moments later BOOM! We looked behind us, and smoke was coming out of the back of a car. Like everyone around, we ran for about 20 feet, turned, pulled out the cameras, took a few shots and then got out of there.
We had no idea what big deal it was until the next day, it's all we saw on the news. We feel incredibly lucky and feel so blessed that the car bomb didn't work the way it was supposed to. We had actually been standing right next to the SUV for about 2-3 minutes while we made plans and checked our map. We headed back to our apartment and got packed up, ready to leave early in the morning.Sunday morning came pretty quickly. Although in a hurry, Christian's just gotta get those veggies in. Christian enjoyed the yummy New York food during the day (Sandwiches, Cheesecake, etc.), but he still made sure to have a healthy breakfast every day. Usually an omelet. This morning he was cleaning out the fridge as well. Yummy! Broccoli!
We headed out the door to Penn Station.
We thought the subways were messed up on Saturdays....WOW. That's an understatement for how things run on Sundays. After having to wait way longer than we'd expected at the train station, and then finding out that the shuttles even run different on Sundays before 7am, we got to check in when it was time for our flight to be taking off. So yes, we missed our flight!
They got us on another one though that would be leaving about 4 hours later. We waited for that one, but when it was time to board, they wouldn't let us. They said there was some ERROR and we'd just have to wait for the Mechanic to fix it. After waiting about a half hour they just decided to put us on another airplane. But we had a connection in St. Paul, Minnesota that was leaving at 2:20pm. Well, our flight touched down and pulled into the gate at 2:15pm. We ran our hearts out all the way from gate G11-C4, only to get there in time to see our plane backing out and turning away!Again devastated we had to re-route. So we grabbed some food and got on a flight to Denver, Colorado and then connected on that one to Salt Lake City! Finally, we were home! So what was supposed to be a direct flight for us, getting us home in time to see the kids at noon right after they would be getting home from church....we got home at 10:00pm! But at least we were home!
This really was such a neat trip to be able to take together. I'm so glad Christian won a tip at work! Way to go honey! Some great memories from a great trip!
4 comments:
That seriously is an amazing trip! You guys packed in so many sights. Sometimes getting lost in NYC is just as fun as the planned stuff. They have made so much progress at Ground Zero since we were there 5 years ago. I hope they finish the buildings before 2035 though! That's a long time.
Holy crap. I was totally thinking about you guys when I saw the news about the car bomb. I thought maybe you were home already, but I guess not. Glad that you guys are safe and finally made it home.
what a trip!
What an awesome trip! Was this your first trip together without kids? I think we should try that out one day.
freaking amazing! i love NY! you took great pics! sounds like you guys had so much fun:) It's crazy to see how many buildings there are and how tall they are! i love that about NY!!!! So glad that he won that vacation! So cool:) and so sad that you missed your flight...craziness!! but it makes a good memory!
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