NYC!!
Saturday, July 24th
Jared and I have never taken a red-eye before. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep very well unless I took something so I did but…it didn’t help. Usually, Jared can sleep anywhere, anytime, anyplace. However, this time it was a ‘no go’ for the both of us! I think we each got maybe an hour or so of sleep all added together. It made our first day in NYC pretty tough. We tried to make the best of it though…even if we hadn’t really slept in the past 48 hrs. and it was one of the hottest days on record in New York! 😛
Here we are on the AirTrain heading into Manhattan!!
We look tired but we were definitely excited too! 😀
The AirTrain doesn’t take you all the way into the city. We decided to take the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR for you cool NY people. 😛 ) at the transfer.
From there we took the subway the rest of the way to the hotel. It was so weird coming out of the subway into the Big Apple. As soon as we surfaced it felt like the scene from “Enchanted” when Giselle emerges from the manhole and everything is loud and spinning and bright! I’m not kidding…it was surreal! 😀
We found our hotel, The Michelangelo, dropped off our luggage and headed out to see the sights. But before we could get a good start we stopped for some breakfast at this little hole in the wall shop for THE BEST bagels I’ve EVER had!!! 🙂
Soooo tasty!!
Once we had our carb over-load we walked over to Times Square.
It’s a little strange being there…you see it in movies and on TV on New Year’s Eve, but for some reason when we got there we weren’t 100% we were ‘there’. LOL! It didn’t look as “official” as we thought it would. As if it should be roped off or have a huge neon sign saying “TIMES SQUARE”!! LOL! 😛
All we found was this regular run of the mill sign. 😀
We weren’t sure exactly what we should do and see first, so we just kept walking up the street and found the M&M store where this groovy guy was hanging out.
We did a little window shopping and decided to go out to lower Manhattan to the Financial District to see where the Twin Towers once stood.
We got on the subway at 50th street and I found this lovely treasure on the wall. I fell in love! 😀
We rode the subway all the way down and as we were walking over to the site I spotted this awesome shot! It just captures the ‘feel’ of NY to me. Skyscrapers all around, very narrow passages between buildings..it’s so cool. 😉
This building here is one of the 5 they are going to be building as apart of the Memorial Site.
You can see from the World Financial Center Building where the Towers once stood. It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a decade and there still isn’t anything finished…
While we were down at the Twin Towers we ran into our friends the Christiansen’s. They were in NY picking up their son from his mission. Sadly…I didn’t think to take a picture of us all together. 🙁 I thought I’d write it down anyway, so that I wouldn’t forget how coincidental our meeting was! 😀
Since there wasn’t really a whole lot to see in lower Manhattan we got back on the subway to head back to our hotel.
We became experts at purchasing MetroCards!
Little did we know we would end up spending almost the entire rest of the day like this!! Jared looking very New York. 🙂
We kept getting on the wrong subways and it was sweltering down there. The trains have a/c but while waiting for them and getting turned around a few hundred times we just sat in hot humid muck! BLECK!
Did I also mention we were dog tired from no sleep?? There were some cranky moments for sure. But we tried our best to make the best of it. 🙂
We did end up at Central Park. That was a bonus! Jared was so mesmerized by Central Park the entire trip that’s what he talked about! LOL!
We eventually made it back to the hotel, took a nap for an hour or so, and then we were back out on the town!
Before we left AZ we bought tickets to see the Broadway Show Wicked. I had heard from several friends that it was wonderful..but I tend to take reviews with a grain of salt until I see it for myself. I have to say they were NOT wrong!!! It was THE BEST show I’ve seen. It had the perfect balance of acting, humor, singing, dancing. It was FANTASTIC! I literally had goosebumps the entire show! 😀
I can’t wait for it to come back to AZ so I can take the kids! 🙂
