Our first day, we drove up (a 6-7 hr drive after stops) and just had time to check in to our hotel in Midtown and change before our dinner reservations and Broadway show! This was by far our favorite activity of the trip. I didn't get a picture of the E&E Grill House, but we both had steaks and dessert and the food was fantastic. Then we walked the 10 blocks or so down to the theater district to see The Phantom of the Opera. It was awesome!
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| The view from our hotel window. |
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| All fancied up and ready to go out on the town. |
On the second day it was rainy, so we made it our museum day. James wants to visit every air and space museum that we come across, and this one was on The Intrepid (a retired carrier), so of course we had to go.
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| On the Intrepid looking out over the Hudson river. |
In our quest to find great New York pizza, we decided on Famous Famiglia's. It was yummy, but greasy. But apparently it really is famous because the restaurant had a whole wall of pictures of famous people eating there.
Then we hopped on the Subway to head over to the American Museum of Natural History. We found that the NYC subway system is a bit more complex than the D.C. metro, so we had a bit of a hard time figuring it out. We waited for half an hour due to some delays, and then when the train finally was up and running again, we accidentally got on the Downtown train. We went for a few stops before we figured out we were going the wrong way, so we got off and went over to the other side. Once we got on the Uptown train, we thought it would be smooth sailing, but apparently that particular line was running an express train so we ended up going too far again. A very nice person on the train told us what line to switch to to get to our stop, and we finally made it to the museum, about an hour and a half later than we had intended. Fortunately after that we didn't have any more Subway problems.
I have never seen such a huge museum, we could have spent days in there and not seen everything. But at this point it was about 3 p.m. and our feet were majorly protesting, so we only went to a few exhibits.
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| My favorite part of the museum was this life-sized whale. So cool! |
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| James photobombing the Stegosaurus. |
Since the museum was right across from Central Park, we had planned to go there for a little while after the museum, but because of the Subway delay and our aching feet, we didn't get a chance. We went back to the hotel to collapse on the bed for an hour, and then we went out to Ellen's Stardust Diner for dinner. That was definitely an experience. It's a 50s style diner with average diner food, but what made it really fun was that the waiters are all aspiring Broadway performers, and in between serving food, they sing and dance karaoke style. It was so loud that we had to shout to each other, but it was really fun.
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| One of the waiters singing. |
And on the way home from the diner, we found Carnegie Deli, which is rumored to have the most delicious cheesecake. I had to stop and get a slice, and it was heavenly!
On the morning of Day 3 we (successfully) took the Subway all the way down to the tip of Manhattan to take the Staten Island Ferry. We would have loved to actually go into the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, but unfortunately both are closed due to repairs from Hurricane Sandy. So we did the next best thing and rode the free ferry past it.
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| The Manhattan skyline from the ferry. |
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| Lady Liberty |
Our afternoon adventure was Papaya's Hotdogs for lunch (I was not impressed...I've made better hotdogs in the microwave, but you have to at least try one while in NY) and the Empire State Building.
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| It was a really beautiful building on the inside. |
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| We met King Kong. He was offended because I didn't get a picture with him too. (There was an actual guy in that suit.) |
The view from the 86th floor was spectacular. And very windy. We could have paid an extra $20 each to go to the 106th floor, but we are too cheap since the tickets were already $25 each.
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| The building with the pointy top is the Chrysler Building, the tallest brick building in the world. |
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| Right in the middle of the photo you can see the Statue of Liberty if you squint. |
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| The Flatiron building. |
After the Empire State Building, we decided to walk back to the hotel (20ish blocks, or about 2 miles) so that we could pass through Times Square.
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| We found Captain America patrolling Times Square :-) |
We stopped to rest our feet and get a snack at Lindy's World Famous Cheesecake, but it didn't compare to Carnegie's. Dinner that night was this little Italian place a couple blocks from our hotel. It was pretty good.
The next morning we went out for breakfast and then drove home. It was a fun trip! I couldn't do as much as I wanted to because we were limited on time, and because I had to take breaks and go slower than usual. If we had had another day I would have loved to go to Central Park, and do some window shopping at places like Tiffany's and Bloomingdale's. But we were pretty tired and ready to go home when we did. And our pocketbooks were glad we went home when we did, New York is expensive! One of the things I enjoyed the most was just getting four solid days with James. Our schedules have been so busy lately so it was really nice to have a little getaway. We had a lot of fun together.
My overall impression of New York is that there are way too many people crammed into a small space. The city is old, overcrowded, expensive, dirty, and smelly, and there aren't nearly enough trees. It is a fun place to visit, but I sincerely don't know how people can live there. I would go crazy! When we left and got out of the city and I started seeing green trees and plants, I felt like I could breath again. In comparison with London and Washington D.C., New York is definitely uglier and dirtier. But it has some really cool attractions for sure. I am glad that I went, but I probably won't dream of going back.
