Of all the amazing places I've seen, New York City has eluded me. I've been to country after country, great city after city in the states but never the Big Apple. So on November 27th, Jay and I woke up extra early to be out of the house by 4 to drive to Milford, DE to catch our bus up there! Jay's Nan goes up every year after Thanksgiving to do her shopping and invited us to come along this time. We were so excited! We left at 4, headed up to Delaware and boarded the bus along with many other excited shoppers. We had done some pre-planning and changed our minds a few times on what to see and how to get everywhere, but by the time we arrived at Rockefeller Center we had a good idea of what we wanted to accomplish. The bus dropped us off at 11 am and would be departing at 7pm so we didn't have much time to dawdle!
We took a walk around Rockefeller Center and the surrounding area first to get our bearings, and to see the holiday decorations. NYC seems to sparkle for Christmas! The tree wasn't lit yet but there were plenty of other decorations to get excited about. After a few minutes, we headed to the subway and went south. We really wanted to see Ground Zero. From where we were we couldn't see a whole lot but construction, but it was just amazing to see how much has to be done 9 years after the attacks. We also took a look at the church across the street from where the towers stood, St. Paul's. It's the oldest building in Manhattan in continuous use and has seen the Great Fire, Washington's Inauguration and the attacks of September 11th.
After that we headed down to the harbor to catch the Staten Island Ferry. We really wanted to tour the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, but that would have taken up most of our 8 hours in the city. Instead, we took the ferry across to get a good look at the old girl and promised her we'd be back soon to properly introduce ourselves! It took a little longer than expected, because our first ferry was delayed due to medical emergency. That meant we missed the return ferry completely and had to wait another 30 minutes. Just enough time to grab a hot dog! We did a little more exploring uptown and bought Hayden a t-shirt and a sweatshirt for me.
From there we took our time wandering through Times Square. I could spend all day there! There is so much to see and everything is bright and shiny and lit up and entertaining. We ran across the Naked Cowboy and the Naked Cowgirl, took a quick trip inside Toys 'R Us, checked out a few shops and took a ton of pictures. From there we headed to Top of the Rock, where we got SUPER discounted tickets for being military ID card holders. Woohoo! We waited for our turn to go up and were not disappointed by the amazing views. We saw the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Central Park, Times Square and more at night. It was incredible, and definitely lived up to my NYC ideas.
After all that it was time to find our bus and head back home. We saw a ton in 8 hours and are already planning our next trip to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, do more shopping and eating and see more sights. After all the travel we did in Europe, we found that the shortcuts are just as helpful, there are just as many people not speaking English and the subway is virtually the same everywhere.
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