We topped off our amazing vacation (click here to see all that we’ve done until now, or you can scroll to the left and select our vacation posts by chapter) with a trip to New York City! We left Friday morning at 1:45am. Crazy, we know. But after looking at maps, making our plans, and seeing that it would take 4hours to get to New Jersey, (our beginning point), we decided to beat all the traffic and head out as soon as we were all showered and ready.
Potty break!
We arrived at Liberty Park, NJ around 6:45am with plenty of time for breakfast and taking in the view before our 8am ferry ride. It was so awesome watching the sun rise over a city we had only seen on T.V or in the movies!
The ferry building used to be an old train station. It was beautiful!
So, we had decided to begin our trip with the earliest ferry ride to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We left from the NJ side so that we could avoid all the NYC traffic, not just the car traffic, but we heard that the line for this particular ferry service is crazy on the New York side. But, to end up in NY instead of back in New Jersey we had to ‘ferry-hop’ to the other line… it couldn’t have worked out any more perfect!
First stop: Ellis Island.
What an eye-opening experience to read the immigration stories of those who gave EVERYTHING to live “the dream” in America.
So many immigrants spent days and months looking out at New York City dreaming of it being their future home while enduring countless tests, physicals, and examinations.
They had a wall of all the immigrants who entered first by way of Ellis Island.
Relatives?
In all her grandeur: The Statue of Liberty.
On our way to NYC!
We started at the southern tip of Manhattan in Battery Park.
Then we walked up toward Wall St. past the Charging Bull,
then on to the New York Stock Exchange,
past George Washington,
and one of the many Trump Buildings.
Just a little more north we passed by Ground Zero,
and the 9/11 tribute center which was heart breaking. This statue is holding some of the items recovered from the many who died during the attack.
There’s no going to New York without getting some true, New York pizza for lunch. Delicious!
After lunch we headed for the subway (which to our surprise, was so much cleaner than Chicago!)
Next stop, Chinatown!
Then a stroll through Little Italy,
le which also led us past the fire department where many gave their lives to help people during 9/11.
We hopped back on the subway to check out Grand Central: So AMAZING; pictures can’t do it justice.
We stepped out for a spectacular view of the city, (which we were excited to conquer),
then made our way to the New York Public Library. And… WOW! The architecture was brilliant.
After the library we went for a tour of middle Manhattan. Times Square was so COOL!
Forever 21 had the neatest display… if that’s what you want to call it. You could see yourself standing in the screen. (I zoomed in for proof that we were there.)
(If you look hard in the picture below we are in the left middle of the screen standing in a row)
Then this hot chick walks in front with a polaroid camera, snaps a picture, then holds it up close and you can see yourself in zoom! So cool. Technology… it does the craziest stuff these days!
Gross. Be thankful YOU didn’t have to see her and her sagginess turn around. What happened to the hot buff guy in his American gear? They must have traded places… darn. But to be honest, NYC smells a bit like sewage and is kind of gross! I mean, totally cool, but also very dirty.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
The Rockefeller Center
We went up ‘on top of the Rock’ for breathtaking views of NYC!
It was incredible. That, the Statue of Liberty and Times Square were our most favorite things! (Thanks Jay for being our personal photographer!) It was so neat to be able to see how MUCH of New York City we had walked and conquered in only one day. But, we still had 5th Avenue (the richest street in America) and Central Park to explore.
The Trump Tower.
We walked past tons of expensive stores, but didn’t have much time left in the day for any shopping. (Nor did we have money! Ha, ha.) We were disappointed too that the Apple store was under construction, otherwise we would have had a cool picture of it’s ALL glass store-front.
We had a nice evening stroll through Central Park.
By this point we were utterly exhausted!
And here’s where a trip got a little haggard…
Mind you, we were running on the little sleep we might have had on the car ride over, were exhausted from the hours and miles we put on our feet, and hadn’t eaten dinner yet. I made the mistake of thinking that the subway line we needed to take to get us out the city and back to New Jersey closed at 10pm. There was NO way I wanted to get stuck in Manhattan. Instead of stopping for dinner, (for fear that the wait might be too long) we searched for the subway around 8:30ish. We got a little lost and did a little more walking than we would have liked. After making the wrong connections (again, my fault), we ended up in down-town New Jersey where we still had to find our way back to Liberty Park where the car was parked. It was like 9:00pm. Tired of the subway, we all agreed that it would be nice to walk along the pretty waterfront of New Jersey, not thinking that the car was very far. I mean, the view of NYC at night was gorgeous!
Well, the walk wasn’t as easy as we had hoped, and we probably should have just given in and paid for the light-rail that would have taken us within minutes of our car. Here’s a picture I took of NJ during the day. Let’s just say that the sub we took ended in the furthest right part of the picture. We had to walk to the little pointy building you see furthest to the left. It might not have been that bad except that at the end of the big buildings to the left, there was a little river/estuary area for the boats and ferries to dock. With no way to cross, we kept zigzagging our way through the city (there wasn’t like a walkway along this little river) until we found a way over which was probably another extra mile INTO the city, then we had to walk BACK to the waterfront area once we crossed.
An hour and a half later, grumpier as ever, we finally made it back to the car thankful that we hadn’t been mugged. Scary! To top it off we got lost trying to get out of New Jersey, took a few too many wrong turns, and freakin’ ended up back in New York City! Really?!? The whole reason we did things the way we did was so that we wouldn’t have to deal with all that traffic! Well, Jared hopped into the driver seat and thankfully got us out of the city safely. After everyone calmed down, stopped pointing fingers, and started speaking to one another again, we stopped at a 24hour diner to finally eat dinner at 1am. We didn’t make it home until after 4am where Jared was lucky enough to sleep straight until 2 o’clock in the afternoon! Not the case with us… both kids were up by 7am. But, Nana was kind enough to take them to a park for a few hours so that we could take a nap.
That afternoon we spent time with the Becks and ate a delicious gourmet dinner created by Alex and Joey. (No pictures… but it was pretty awesome!) After our farewells we headed up to Rochester (another 2 hours away – and yes… if we could have done anything differently, it would have been to spend LESS time in a car!) where Nana, Zz and Jared dropped us off at a hotel to catch a few hours of sleep before our flight departed at 5:35am Sunday morning. Then we had the 10hour flight from Hell: delayed in air and on the ground for lightening, nearly missed our connecting flight, and Allie screamed the entire time (when she didn’t sleep for more than maybe 2 hours total). People kept staring at us like we weren’t trying to get her to stop! The lady in front of us actually stood up, turned around and was like “Can I just take her for like FIVE minutes and get her to stop crying!?!?” I was like “Sure lady! Here ya go!” and handed here Allie. That just made her go even more high-pitched. Perfect. It was miserable. We were exhausted. We were so jealous of the other passengers who were cuddled up on each other fast asleep. Then of course we still had to drive home from Seattle, but at least then we could just ignore the screaming by opening the windows and blasting some music. (I took her to the doctors when we got home secretly hoping she had double ear infections or something. Nothing. Dr. thinks she might be teething again. Lame. We were hoping this wouldn’t be a phase that lasts!) But, W-O-W. It was awful. However, we are so glad Allie held out to the end of the trip and so thankful she wasn’t that way in the beginning… now we only have to erase the last parts from memory! But really, we had an AMAZING trip! Thank you so much to everyone who helped make it an awesome time 
