New York! New York! Day 2

So our intentions on Friday were to turn in early and wake up early Saturday, but it didn’t happen. We didn’t get to bed till 1am. So we ended up sleeping till 10:30 and didn’t get out of the hotel till near lunchtime. We ventured out for lunch and ended up eating at roadside carts. I had nuts and Wes had a hot dog. After eating, we decided to go to Rockefeller Center. Radio City music hall is nearby, as is St. Patrick’s church, which with our luck, was under renovation (EVERY big cathedral, castle and historical building we've visited has been under renovation while we are there. Never fails!)

Where the Christmas Tree Goes.

While we were there, they cleared the ice rink and the "Zamboni" came out to smooth the ice. It's not a real Zamboni.

Rockefeller Plaza. Mom and I are going to the top next month..

The Atlas statueSt. Patricks' Cathedral with its restoration scaffolding around it.

We were both pretty tired still and our feet were hurting, so we headed back to the hotel and sat around for a few hours. Tyler (Wes’ cousin)was at West Point for a football game. He and a friend came into town later that night and we met up with them at Grand Central Station.

Deserted train platform...

Here comes a train...

And the mob.....

Tyler and his friend wanted to see a show, so we walked with them back to Times Square for tickets, then we headed back towards the hotel and found another hole-in-the-wall diner for dinner/pre marathon carb-loading food. We found the Olympic Diner. We both got Spaghetti (wes had meatballs, I had meat sauce). It was wonderful! Very tasty as you can tell! After we ate, we took the subway (kinda got lost) back to the hotel and crashed. Had to get up early to catch the ferry to Fort Wadsworth. My ferry time was 8:15, but according to the website, that was the last ferry departure, so I wanted to make sure I got there in time….. (Turned out, they weren’t checking your time. I could have gotten there at 5am and got on.) yummmmmm!!

more random pics..... the subway was fascinating to me...

New York! New York! (Day 1)

What a fun trip! I never thought I would actually like New York. The city-life I mean. I always pictured NY as a uber-busy, dirty, unsafe city. Muggings, no personal space, homeless and beggars on the streets, rude pushy "yankee" people, etc. I was wrong (or at least we chose the right part of town to stay in!) It was pretty busy and a little dirty (not nearly as dirty as New Orleans I must say). I never felt unsafe, even the morning I ventured out alone. With the help of an iPhone ap, we were able to pretty easily navigate the transit system. I've been to big cities before (Chicago, Munich & Rome are the only slightly comparable ones, although Rome is not necessarily modern), but nothing like this. It's hard to picture millions living in such a small area. Wiki says Manhattan has more then 70,000 people per square mile!

Anyway, we managed to make our flights and got there around noon. We took the airtrain from JFK to Manhattan and got on the subway to get to our hotel. It was a cool Brownstone (I guess it qualifies) with 8 floors of rooms, some with bathrooms, some without. We're broke, so we didn't spring for a private bathroom. The room was really small, but had everything we needed, including a nice view of the Empire State Building.

After we got settled in, we headed to find food on our way to the Expo. The Expo was on the west side of Manhattan, about a 20 minute walk from our Hotel. On the way we passed the Empire State Building, Macy's (which was partially decorated for Christmas), and a bunch of other stuff that probably has more historical significance than we realized.

The Empire State Building

Macy's took up a whole block.

After eating lunch at Five Guys, we headed for the Expo which was in the Jacob Javitz Convention Center. The Expo was held for three days. We were there on the second day.

We had to find the right place to get my bib number. It was pretty easy actually. I expected to be waiting in line forever. They had a counter for every 1000 runner numbers, which meant they had 65 counters! Once I found the right one, I walked right up to the lady and got my number in minutes.

The t-shirt/goody bag line was a little longer. It was divided up into shirt sizes. Once we had everything, we started exploring the expo... We didn't take that many pictures inside because it was pretty dark.

Gatorade's exhibit.

We headed back to the hotel to drop off my expo stuff and headed for the Empire State Building. It would dark by the time we got there, so we got to see the city lights from the top.

Saw this sign, had to take a picture!

First time I've ever seen a multi level car park like this... Wonder how long it takes to get those cars down off the top...
We ended up eating dinner at this little diner called the Skylight Diner (It had skylights in the ceiling. Go figure.) We didn’t want to eat at any of these expensive places where “everybody” (everybody meaning tourists) goes to eat. (BTW there was a “Bubba Gump” restaurant in Times Square). We wanted to eat where the locals eat.

From the top of the Empire State Building

old school mail shoots inside the Empire State.

You can tell where Times Square is by the bright area between the buildings.

It was mighty windy and cold up there!!

lobby

From the top, we could see how close we were to Times Square. We didn't realize how close it was. We were pretty tired, but wanted to go anyway..... Portions of the streets were turned into pedestrian areas which had tables and benches to sit on. We went at 10pm and it was as bright as daylight.

After Times Square, we headed back to the hotel to call it a night. Here's some random picks from the subway I thought were cool....
Please "dip" your card??

more to come...