Catching up on my Blog before our next big trip!
New York City
Monday, August 29th – Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016
Monday Day 1: Getting
to New York
Our flight was supposed to take off around 2:30pm from Grand
Rapids. We all got checked in just
fine…we got through security just
fine…and we boarded the plane just fine.
Just as we were about to take off, we get this announcement that there
were ‘pop-up storms’ over Chicago. And
since we had a layover in Chicago, we could not take off. I think for almost 2 hours we sat in the
airplane on the taxi runway. Finally,
our pilot announced that we were heading back to the terminal to get off the
plane. Not a great way to start out a trip.
We were only off the plane for less than an hour when we got
the announcement that we would be getting back on the plane to head to
Chicago. Once we finally made it to
Chicago, we figured that because all the flights had been pushed out, that our
connecting flight had been pushed out as well.
Well….we found out that we actually had missed our connecting flight and
we would have to book another flight. We had no clue what we were supposed to
do. Finally, a flight attendant pointed
us to a bank of phones and told us that we needed to pick up the phone and
rebook a flight that way. I picked up
the phone, it started dialing and I was connected to a person that would help
us get another flight to New York.
Because of the storms and because of all the chaos, she could not get us
a flight to LaGuardia where we were supposed to go…or even JFK.
The only flight we could get on was to one going to Newark NJ. I quickly Google mapped the distance and it
was actually about the same distance from our apartment as LaGuardia was. So, we booked the flight!
Once we finally made it to Newark, we headed to the luggage carousal. It was then that we realized that our luggage
had still flown to LaGuardia and would be delivered the next day to our
apartment. We were pretty defeated by
then. It was now 11pm, we were exhausted
and now we had no clothes or any shower stuff.
I saw that some other people got little shower kits and I asked if we
could get some too, since we had nothing.
The kits had toothpaste and toothbrush, deodorant, a comb, razor, and
shaving gel. Not much help, but better
than nothing I guess.
Once we were done with the luggage stuff, we called an Uber
and had them pick us up to take us to our apartment on Manhattan. Somehow, Taylor and I communicated
telepathically and we pushed Gary to sit up front with the driver so he would
have to talk to the guy while the two of us sat in the back quietly. Neither one of us was in a mood to chitchat!
Haha. After about 40 min, we finally
made it to our apartment! We met
Jennifer outside of our brownstone in the Hamilton Heights area of
Manhattan. She got us the keys and
showed us our home for the week. It was
a small 1 room studio apartment in a 3 story brownstone with several other
apartments. It had a little balcony that
you accessed through a window. I loved
it! We told her how our luggage was
stranded at LaGuardia and we asked her if she thought they would just put it
outside the building and leave it. She
looked at us like we had lasers coming out of our eyes. “Oh my God, no! They would never leave your luggage on the
stoop!”. I guess things are different
here in New York! After she left, we
didn’t really have much to do but try and clean up the best we could and go to
bed in our travel clothes.
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Our Apartment |
Tuesday Day 2: First
day in New York
The next day came early.
We were anxiously waiting for our luggage to arrive. I called and checked the delivery
website. We didn’t know when it was
going to arrive, but we saw that it was on its way. In the meantime, we decided to at least check
out our neighborhood and get some food.
Jennifer had mentioned this café called “Sugar Hill Café”. Her dad was an artist and he had a bunch of
his paintings in this café. We went
there and happily got drinks and something to eat. Afterwards, we walked to this small grocery
store called “Food Town” and loaded up on stuff for the week. On our way back to the apartment, we took the
long way home to just wander through the neighborhood and a park. We didn’t want to stray too far from home,
since we wanted to be ready for when our luggage was delivered. It was afternoon and we were still stranded
with no stuff. I made another call to
the luggage company and they said that they would get us our luggage right
away. Within 30 minutes, this van pulls
up outside our building, a guy gets out and starts unloading luggage. We ran downstairs to meet him. They guy’s name was Carlos. He had a beat up van full of luggage and
about 10 members of his family apparently.
We cheered for Carlos and thanked him so much for getting us our
luggage. We ran upstairs, took much
needed showers, changed our clothes and finally were ready to go explore New
York! We knew we wouldn’t get too far
since it was already 4pm, but we were excited to get out of the apartment!
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| Gary and Taylor waiting for Carlos to deliver our luggage |
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| I got to sit on a New York stoop! |
We headed to the 145th street metro station,
hopped on a train and headed south into the city. We got off at the North side of Central Park
and decided to just walk south from there.
There is just so much to see around every corner! We saw the Dakota hotel where Lennon was shot,
we wandered through Central Park all the way to Columbus Circle. There we found a Subway to sit and eat
dinner. Then we wandered down Broadway
and made our way to Time’s Square. By
the time we got there it was dark and the lights were just magnificent! We sat and people watched for a while. I honestly could spend hours just sitting in
Time’s Square and staring at the people!
It was around 9-10pm that we decided to head back to the apartment so
that we could have a full day of wandering and walking the next day.
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| Dakota Hotel where Lennon was shot |
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| Looking across the Jackie Kennedy Resevoir to the Upper East side |
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| Well...we saw it. |
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| So many people in Time's Square |
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| Time's Square |
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| Every day is garbage day in the city - and this is what it looks like waiting to be picked up! |
Wednesday Day 3: Mid-Town!
The next day, we hopped on the metro again and headed south
into the city. We started around Time’s
square again to hit more of the attractions.
We toured St. Patrick’s Cathedral; Grand Central Station, the Chrysler
Building (just the lobby) and the NY public library on 5th
avenue. The Library was actually
amazing. We spent hours in there! That building was the first building of the
NY library system. I was also pumped because
that library was the setting for many scenes from the Ghostbusters movie.
Haha. The main thing that I wanted to
see in that building was the large reading room on the top floor. The Rose Main Reading room has been in
several movies and it is just a site to see.
We get to the entrance only to see that it is under construction and
won’t be opening until October of 2016. We had missed the opening by 1
month. I was devastated!
After that huge let down, we wandered downstairs and
discovered that the library had the original Winnie the Pooh stuffed
animals. I thought that was really cool,
but it still didn’t ease the sting of not being able to see the Rose Reading
room.
We just kept heading down 7th avenue until we got
to Penn station and Madison Square garden.
Penn station is insane compared to Grand Central Station. I thought that it was by far way more busy
then Grand Central. There were people
running everywhere! And it seemed like
there were way more trains coming and going and just way bigger in
general. I don’t understand how the term
“busier than Grand Central Station” came about because the saying really should
be “busier than Penn station!”
From Penn Station, you can see the Empire State
building. We headed over there and went inside to take a tour of the observation
deck. We got in line and saw that it was
around $50 per person. We all looked at
each other and said let’s get out of here.
None of us wanted to see the city skyline that bad anyway. Haha.
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| Madison Sq. Garden and Penn Station are connected and have sort-of the same entrance |
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| Empire State Building - Has the same look and feel as the Chrysler Building |
After the Empire State building, we headed down 5
th
to Madison Square Park and the Flat Iron building. This area of the city was where it was
getting really nice. The parks are
beautiful and the buildings just have a lot of character. At this point, we had been walking for hours
and Taylor was really getting towards the end of her energy. I just kept trying to convince here to go a
little bit farther! We then headed over
to Kleinfeld’s Bridal store from the show “Say yes to the dress”. It’s funny because the entrance is down this
really plain street with no other store front entrances on it. It almost looks like an alleyway. We got there, took a couple of pictures so we
could say we saw it and then headed on our way.
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| Madison Sq. Park and the Flat Iron Building |
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| Kleinfeld's from Say Yes to the Dress - the entire rest of the street is nothing. |
At this point, Taylor was dying from walking so much, but we
talked her into stopping at one more place before heading to the metro
station. There was this bar called
McSorley’s that I had read about online.
It’s the oldest Irish bar in NY and it is featured in the opening
credits of SNL for 2017. The bar is over
a hundred years old and it looks like it on the inside. Every square inch of that place has something
nailed to the wall. They say that
nothing has been removed from the walls since 1910. Also, there are several wishbones hanging
over the bar. The legend is that they
were placed there by guys heading off to war and would be removed when they
returned. The ones still hanging there
are from the guys that didn’t make it back.
We walked in to this place and the waiter just asks if we want light or
dark beer…there’s no other choice….just light or dark. He brings us each 2 glasses of beer. That’s how it comes…2 at a time. This place was great! We drank our beer and people watched. The bar tender asked us where we were
from. We said Michigan and he was
shocked because he said they only ever get locals in there. After we paid and started heading out, the
bartender stopped me and gave me a postcard from the bar. On the back he wrote down a couple of other
local spots that we should check out while we were in town. We thanked him and finally headed to the
metro station to head home to Taylor’s delight.
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| Wishbones hanging on the light |
Thursday Day 4: The
Lion King!
The next day we weren’t planning on wandering around the
city too much because we were going to see the Lion King that evening. It was raining in the morning anyway, so we
decided to go to the Museum of Natural History…the one where “Night at the
Museum” was filmed. Apparently, going to
the museum is what all the other tourists in New York decided to do that day
too. The lines were long and the museum
was packed! Once we finally made it inside,
we wandered around each floor. I really
wasn’t too interested in most of the stuff…I know that’s terrible to say, but
it’s true. I think Gary and Taylor felt
the same the way. The only really
interesting part were the dinosaur bones.
Everyone else must have thought the exact same thing, because the entire
dinosaur exhibit was packed as well.
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| Entrance of the Museum of Natural History |
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| The dinosaurs were the only cool part |
After a few hours of fighting the crowds at the museum, we
decided to head back to the apartment to get ready for the play. We ate, got dressed up and headed out to see
the Lion King in Time’s square! The
Minskoff theater was where the play was being performed. It’s just off 7th street in Time’s
square. Gary and Taylor had never been
to a play before, so they had no idea what to expect. I have been to many plays and I was really
excited to see this one. The play was
amazing! I’m so glad we went. Even Gary liked it! After the play, we walked through Time’s
Square again to people watch a bit. We
were going to do some more walking around, but both Taylor and my feet were
killing us because we were wearing heals.
We were hurting so bad I didn’t think we were going to make it to the
metro station! At some point, I think
Taylor gave up and just took her shoes off, but I can’t remember for sure
because I was in so much pain!
Friday Day 5: Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn
Our plan for Friday was to go to the financial district and
see the 9/11 memorial. The last time I
had been to this area was back in 2005 and they were still cleaning things up
and doing major construction on the place.
Basically, the entire couple of blocks was still a big hole in the
ground surrounded by fences. We decided
not to go up into 1 World Trade center because the line was really long, so we
just observed the building and walked around the Twin Towers memorial pools. It was so surreal to look out across the
pools and think that 2 entire buildings used to stand there. As we stood there at the pool, Gary looks
down and says something about the person’s name. I look down and the person’s name on the
memorial was Dickinson. I thought that
was really weird that out of thousands of people’s names on this memorial, we
just happened to stop right in front of someone that shared my last name.
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| Looking up at 1 World Trade Center |
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| What are the odds that we stopped by this name |
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| The North Pool |
We then went to the 9/11 memorial museum. It was so sad and weird to see some of that
stuff. They had beams that were melted
and bent like tissue paper. There was a
fire truck that was melted. They had
some people’s belongings that they could identify. There was this huge chunk of material that
they had on display...this chunk of material was layers and layers of different
things all smashed together like rings in a tree. It was metal, dirt, paper all fused together
from the pressure and heat of the buildings collapsing. That was unbelievable to see. Not until I was in the museum did it really
register with me that there was not a lot of objects recovered from that day
because so much of it was literally just reduced to dust. The only thing that I didn’t like was that
they had some information and pictures of the terrorists. It was good to read about the terrorists as
part of the history of the event, but what I did not like was that the
terrorists pictures and names were in close proximity to the victim’s
area. I felt that it was too close to
the victims and I felt like the terrorists were almost included in the victim’s
area….all that info should have been separated and placed as far away as
possible from them…but that was just my thought. The one display that I couldn’t spend more
than a second in without wanting to break down was the room where they
literally had an 8 X 10 picture of every single person that perished in that
day’s events (except for the terrorists).
When you see how many 3000 people actually is, it’s unbelievable. As heavy of a day it was, it was still very
interesting to see it all.
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| They identified this steel as the point of impact of Flight 11 |
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| Portion of the radio tower |
After the 9/11 museum, we continued South and walked around
Trinity Church, Wall Street, the Charging Bull and Battery park.
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| Graveyard outside of Trinity Church |
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| This is what the Charging Bull looks like ALL THE TIME. Everyone stands in line to get a picture touching it's balls. I wasn't really interested in touching a stupid statue's balls. |
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| The fort at Battery Park called Castle Clinton National Monument |
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| This sphere was at the World Trade Center complex until 9/11. They moved it to Battery Park and installed an eternal flame. We thought it was stupid that it was there and not near the memorial. Not sure why they did that. |
We wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, but we decided to
take the cheap version of the tour and just take the Staten Island Ferry
instead. The iconic orange ferry is free
and runs every 30 minutes across the harbor to Staten Island. We boarded the ferry, stared at the statue of
liberty and all the other insane boat traffic in the harbor, looped around the
terminal to head on the next ferry back, stared at the statue of liberty again
and all the insane boat traffic and landed back in Manhattan in about an hour
30.
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| Looking back at the city from the Staten Island Ferry |
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| The Statue of Liberty |
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| Cargo Ship |
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| Staten Island Ferry and the city in the background |
After the ferry ride, we decided to head North to finish up
the day walking across the Brooklyn Bridge over to Brooklyn to watch the sun
set. This was by far my favorite thing
to do! The bridge is beautiful and
walking across it was really cool.
Although, there were about 10000 other people walking across it as well.
Actually, most people just walk about ¼ of the way across, take some pictures,
then head back. Once we got across, we
stopped at the coveted Shake Shack, got a snack, then sat in the Brooklyn
Bridge Park to watch the sunset. It was
really cool to see Manhattan from there.
Once it got dark, we headed back to our little apartment for the
evening.
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| Brooklyn Bridge |
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| Walking the Brooklyn Bridge-1 TRILLION people walk this thing - but they all turn around at the halfway point, except for us. |
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| The Brooklyn Bridge - I loved walking across to Brooklyn |
Saturday, Day 6th: Our last day in the city.
This day, the plan was just to hit all the
odds and ends that we had missed the previous days. Our first stop was Tom’s Restaurant, the
place featured in Seinfeld. Then we hopped
on the metro and took it South and we headed to the apartment of Carrie Bradshaw
from Sex and the City. It wasn’t too
hard to find, since there were a handful of people lingering outside of the
stoop when we walked up. There were just
a few people kind of waiting their turn to take pictures in front of the
apartment stoop. When it came time for
this mom and daughter’s turn at taking pictures, instead of taking a few
minutes to take pictures, they probably spent 10 minutes taking the same
picture over and over again. It was such
overkill! They just would not finish
taking pictures! It got to the point of
being ridiculous. They had zero
consideration that anyone else was waiting.
Figures…. Finally, I got my
picture and we could move on with our lives!
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| Seinfeld Restaurant |
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| Carrie Bradshaw's Apartment Stoop! |
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| I don't know why people say that NY is expensive...paying 3k a month for rent on a loft apartment seems totally normal! |
Next, we went to Chelsea where we walked the Highline and
went through the Chelsea market. These
places were jam packed with tourists! It was cool to say that we saw it, but I
wouldn’t want to go there again. The
crowds were just so annoying. You could
hardly walk through the market at all!
After Chelsea, we meandered to the fire station where
Ghostbusters was filmed. I was so
excited to see the actual fire station!
However, I was quickly disappointed when we arrived. The entire station was being
refurbished. It was covered in
scaffolding and some kind of black cover.
I peeked in one of the windows.
The entire inside was just gutted and completely under
construction. So much for fulfilling my
life-long dream of seeing the Ghostbusters fire station!
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| The old tracks of the highline |
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| The highline was insanely busy and touristy....not really a place I would go again |
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| Chelsea Market |
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| This picture is a perfect example as to how insanely packed the market was. Not a place I'll go again either! lol Too many people and tourists. |
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| The outside of the Ghostbusters fire station. ARGH!!! |
Our final tourist stop was Chinatown and Canal street. The plan was to buy some cheap T-shirts and
knock-off couture bags. As we walked
down Canal street, the level of seediness really increased. We were just shy of the cross road on Canal
street that goes into Little Italy, when I decided that I needed to buy a fake
bag. Everywhere you walk, there are
people selling fake stuff. It had been
several years since the first time I had done this, but I was familiar with the
process. I walked up to a random Asian
guy and said that I would like to buy a bag.
He walked us to this girl nearby, and she handed us an iphone with all
these pictures of bags. She told us to
pick which bag we wanted. After I looked
through most of them, I had one in mind that I wanted. I pointed to which one I wanted and he told
us to follow the girl down this semi-empty side street. At first I was a little nervous, especially
because we were away from the crowds of people. She said 80 dollars. I said 30.
She said 60. I said 40. She said 50 and I think that’s what I agreed
to. She said, “wait here”. She made a call on her phone while we stood
there like scared white kids not knowing what to do next. About 10 minutes later, this large, blacked
out SUV pulls up and a guy gets out with a large duffle bag. The girl and the guy rustle around with the
duffle bag and the girl leaves the SUV with a black plastic grocery bag with
something inside of it. The SUV takes
off and the girl walks up to us and shows me that the purse that I picked from
the picture on the phone is in the bag.
I give her the 50 bucks and before we can blink she disappears. As we walked away, Taylor was kind of in
disbelief about what we just did. She
says, “It’s like we just did a drug deal!”.
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| The crossroads of Little Italy and Chinatown just off of Canal Street |
After buying my drug deal purse, I head heard of this place
called Murray’s Cheese Bar that was in the village and we headed there for
dinner. The dinner was expensive, but we
had a great time and enjoyed the food.
Afterwards, we just headed back to our apartment to pack up and rest
before our long day of traveling ahead of us.
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| Before |
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| After |
Sunday: Leaving New York.
Sunday arrives and it’s time for us to head out of New York
back to Michigan. We needed to get to
LaGuardia and I figured since we had plenty of time we could get there no
problem using public transit. We took
the metro down to Time’s Square, that’s where we had to switch trains to cross
the river into Brooklyn. Once we got to
our stop, for some reason, we hesitated…Taylor got off the train, but Gary and I
didn’t. Then, when we tried to get off,
the doors would not open to let us off.
The train takes off and there’s Taylor standing in the terminal all by
herself as our train departs..all we could do was wave at her. It was kind of funny, but we felt so bad for
losing her! We texted her and told her
to get off at the next stop, where we would be waiting for her. We didn’t have to wait long and here comes
Taylor on the next train. We all laughed
how we lost Taylor in Time’s Square.
After that debacle, we managed to switch trains and rode it to the
end. At this point, we didn’t know
exactly how to get the rest of the way to the airport. However, since there were lots of people with
luggage, we figured they were heading to the airport as well, so we just
followed the crowd to a bus terminal that was just outside of the metro
station. We got on the bus with no
problems and ended up at LaGuardia! The
rest of the day of travel went smoothly with no issues.
See you next time New York...it was super fun!
