We got one last glimpse of the Empire State Building as we left St Patrick’s Cathedral Sunday evening after Mass.
From there we went to Top of the Rock, the see the New York skyline at night. Just indescribable. And this was the last picture I took before my batteries died – not surprisingly, one more of the Empire State Building :-). It was certainly a trip we’ll never forget.
Our last day in New York, last Sunday, we started out with a visit to Central Park. As it turned out, the entrance we used was very near the Alice in Wonderland statue. I was especially excited about that, since we have reservations to have a character breakfast with Alice and the Mad Hatter when we go to Disneyworld in January 🙂
We spent quite a bit of time in Central Park – it really is a very cool place – and finally worked our way around to Strawberry Fields.
We didn’t want our trip to New York to end without visiting Macy’s, the biggest store on earth. It really is – oh my goodness. They were decorating for Christmas, and we couldn’t see most of their windows, but inside the store was already so festive!
After we left the 9/11 Museum, we found a very cool Irish Pub just a couple of blocks away to eat supper before we headed to the theater. It was right behind one of the fire stations, and every wall and door were covered, and I do mean covered, with patches and stickers from first responders from all over the world. That was a pretty appropriate place for us to eat after the way we’d spent our afternoon.
“Holiday Inn” was as wonderful as we’d hoped it would be, and the neon lights really ARE bright on Broadway! 🙂
Saturday morning we left the apartment early to eat breakfast and get to our timed entrance to the One World Center Observatory – I think on the 100th floor. Oh my. I am actually not a fan of heights, but that was so high that it didn’t even seem real. And oh, the views! Just breathtaking.
From there we went to the 9/11 Tribute Center, and the tour we went on guided by a firefighter who was there that day, and a crane operator who worked during the recovery process. Wow – what a tribute it was. It was still very emotional for them, so as you can imagine, very much so for those of us listening to them. The Memorial itself is just very moving. There were two squares that followed the footprints of both of the buildings, black marble, with all the names of the victims carved into them. The water running down the sides ran in rivulets, rather than a sheet of water, to represent all the individual lives, then ran together into the hole in the middle. You couldn’t see the bottom of the hole. Just very, very moving.
The Survivors’ Stairs. In both buildings, there was only this one stairwell that didn’t collapse, and the people that happened to find it are the ones that were able to get down to safety. Just very, very moving.
Just a couple more pictures from our first day in New York – these will be the last ones from day one! After we finished eating supper and found Radio City Music Hall, we had a couple of hours to just walk around and do a little sight seeing before time for the show to start. We ran up on St Patrick’s Cathedral. OMG – it was just jaw dropping. What an amazing building.
And then – the Rockettes! I cannot ever remember not wanting to see them, and they were just amazing. Of course no flash photography was allowed, so the pictures didn’t turn out that good, but wow – their precision was just not to be believed. I was especially excited to see the Toy Soldier performance – they have been doing that routine since they were formed in the early 1930’s. How cool is that?
As we were finishing up our Hard Hat Tour, we got this great view of the second building of Ellis Island, which was used as the reception center from the time it was built until the facility closed in 1954. The difference in the architecture was very interesting – this matches up so closely to that of the Empire State Building that you can just tell that they were designed and built around the same art-deco time period.
After our tour we spent some time in the actual museum there at Ellis Island. It was just incredibly interesting and well done – they did an especially good job of driving home all the different emotions the people who were arriving there must have been feeling at that point. One of my favorite exhibits was a piece of the wall of one of the rooms that they uncovered during restoration. It showed all the graffiti that people had left there in so many different languages they can’t figure them all out – notes to family members, that sort of thing. When I was at Ellis Island with Addie about 1992 I took a wrong turn, and ended up in an unrestored room with this all over the walls. It was definitely something I’ve never forgotten.
After we left Ellis Island and found us a killer hamburger place for supper, we walked around downtown until time for us to be at Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes perform. We saw lots of cool things, including – after a couple of wrong turns – the skating rink at Rockefeller Center. No skaters – the Zamboni was in action, and we’re not sure if that was due to the warmer than usual temps they had been having in New York this fall (that was fine with us!) or if it was just the time we were there. The big gold man was covered in scaffolding in preparation for the Christmas tree to go up, and the state flags had all been switched out for US flags to commemorate Veterans Day. Still, it was cool to just be there!
We got up early Friday morning & for breakfast had another food we’d promised ourselves we’d try – New York bagels. There was a bakery even closer to our apartment than the pizza place was, and we ended up eating there every morning. Oh my goodness. Nothing like the frozen Lender bagels we can get here. Then it was off to Battery Park, where we caught our first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.
We didn’t get to climb up to her crown – you have to get tickets for that six months ahead of time – but we did take the tour around her base. It was an audio tour, and the information was – as always – so interesting. I so wish we’d had time to actually study it more closely – next time! I did find the story very interesting about how Joseph Pulitzer raised money for the pedestal by promising to publish every single person’s name who gave even a penny to the program in his newspaper.
We couldn’t stay as long as we normally would have on Liberty Island because we had tickets for the Hard Hat Tour at Ellis Island – where we literally put on hard hats, and toured the buildings that had not been restored yet. It was just incredible seeing the condition of the rooms, which is I guess how all of Ellis Island looked before restoration was begun in the 1970’s. Just very, very interesting.
Last Thursday Lindee & I headed to New York for a long weekend to celebrate our birthdays. What an absolutely awesome time we had. We flew into Newark, and then took the AirTrain, the NJ transit train, and maybe three subways to get to the Airbnb apartment we’d rented for our time there in Spanish Harlem. It was just so, so New York-y! We knew that for sure while we were there we wanted to get New York pizza, so once we got to our apartment and settled in, we headed out to do exactly that. There was this great little pizza place – Neapolitan Pizza – just a block or two from our apartment, and I can now say without a doubt that New York pizza lives up to its reputation. The place was a very cool establishment built is just one of the old buildings there. It was a great way to kick off our trip.
Tuesday when all of the kids were out of school for Election Day, but none of the parents were off work, all six were here to hang out together, along with Little Hope. What a fun time we had. We started off the morning making zucchini bread. Here are these ever silly cousins spraying the baking pans.
Got a quick picture of the six when their dads got here to pick them up early, so everyone could go vote.