Planes, trains, and automobiles...that's what it took for us to get to our few days of freedom. After flying to Baltimore, and driving to our Bethany vacation, we drove the girls back to Baltimore and got them settled, and then headed out the next day via Amtrak to NYC. The send off went surprisingly well. Both girls were in the car as my parents were taking them to the harbor and the aquarium after dropping us, and we didn't have any tears which was nice. Mark and I hopped on the train and a little more than 2 hours later pulled right into Penn Station. Vacation take 2!
We don't get a lot of time away so when we do we savor it. I think our kids are still too young to leave them for any significant amount of time, hence we won't be having any big European trips any time soon. Therefore two nights in NY would be perfect, and it definitely called for a little splurge on the hotel. By splurge, I mean we used more hotel points than we normally would. So we stayed in midtown which put us in a good location to explore the city like we wanted...and explore we did.
When we arrived, we headed down to the bar in our hotel - the Old King Cole, which is fairly well known and is apparently where the bloody mary was first invented. As some of you may know, I am a fan of the bloody mary and so off we went to sample and have a bite to eat. That was our first reminder of NY prices. One appetizer, one sandwich, and a drink (b/c we got one for free) were $100. But you know what - you don't care about that when you're on vacation. We sat and relaxed on our first kid-free meal of the vaca before heading out to my (our? - Mark can't remember) first Broadway show. A friend got us a hook up for seats to the Book of Mormon. We were first row balcony which were awesome seats, and the show was great. It was very entertaining and funny, and I'm so glad we went.
After the show we just started walking south, thinking we'd head down towards the 9/11 memorial. We walked from 55th st down to 9/11 which i think is about 4-5 miles, and zigzagged in between to visit different neighborhoods - Chelsea, Greenwich Village, East Village, SoHo, TriBeca...we enjoyed it all. We stopped off for a few drinks along the way -grabbing a beer or a bite to eat in a few different locations. It made it all fun. I love the neighborhood feel of some of the areas down south, and all the restaurants and bars and places to stop. We both said, it'd be great to live in new york for a few months to really get into it all...
We did not see the 9/11 memorial as i'm pretty sure it was closed when we arrived later in the evening, and the entrance was hard to find, and we didn't have tickets, but we saw the gist of it, and the rebuilding of the Tower as we walked around the building fences. I'm glad we made time to head down there...it is a day I'll never forget.
The next day we had more of the same on tap...more walking of the city. Grand Central Terminal and the Empire State Building were first. My goodness the line for Empire State was long, and once we were committed there was no turning back. I'm happy to say it was worth it (though perhaps not every trip) and the skies were clear so we got great views of the city:
Here's one pic of the Chrysler Building
Once we headed down it was off to find the High Line, and perhaps another quick beer in between. The High Line is this really cool walkway that is basically a repurposed raised railroad. It's west of the city in Chelsea and there were all sorts of people up there walking, relaxing, painting, having lunch, etc. A really cool spot to check out I thought.
My favorite spot on the High Line was the makeshift graffiti zoo. The animals are made out of styrofoam or cardboard or something - seriously creative.
We kept walking till the end - the Meatpacking District and had lunch down there at this great Italian restaurant. Seriously - I'm going to try and recreate the salad Mark had it was so good. Loved this area - it felt so European. Must go back next trip. So by now we've walked another 3-4+ miles, and so heading back North decided to treat ourselves to a cab because it was off to the MoMA, Museum of Modern Art. I have been to the Met before, but not this museum so was happy to see something new. I can't say I'm huge into all forms of Modern Art, but it was a nice way to spend an hour or two. We took a few pictures of some paintings we liked. Mark and I both liked this, though Mark contends he has a picture from elementary school where he did basically the same thing. Clearly he's missed his calling as an artist.
Back to the hotel for a quick rest, but then it was off to Brooklyn! One of the things we wanted to do was walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, so we took a cab down to lower Manhattan, hopped out, and trekked across. Would be a cool way to commute to work in the summer, perhaps less so in the winter.
It was under construction but I got a good picture of Mark with the skyline
And another showing Freedom tower in the background
Once across the bridge we found ourselves a restaurant for some amazing Mexican food. My goodness this food was good. But it was just a quick stop before heading over to meet up with Mark's friend Andy. Always have a good time with him, and that night was no exception. We hung out on their roof for a bit and hit up a few bars...all in all a good visit.
Needless to say, the following morning my feet were aching. But we had one more thing on the docket - Central Park. All of our time thus far had been spent south of the park, which we loved, but we wanted to walk the park as well. So...that's what we did. We walked around the entire park, running the last 1.5-2miles of it, and emerging utterly exhausted, but happy that we had indeed seen a large majority of Manhattan on this trip. We headed out for a quick bite to eat before walking ourselves back to Penn Station and our train home to Baltimore. Two happy kids greeted us, and stayed attached for the rest of the night, afraid we might be leaving them again I think...and the next day we packed up and flew back to Chicago. With the laundry done and clothes and suitcases all put away, it's crazy that this vacation is over, but it was a good one and just what the doctor ordered.
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