Part 7.1: NYC!

After a week spent driving and exploring the country, we took a train down to New York City for the last part of our vacation!

We checked into our hotel on drizzly Sunday and almost immediately headed out to explore all that NYC had to offer!

We stayed at the Bedford hotel. It was great because it was only a few blocks away from Grand Central Station. We even had a stove in our room...but no microwave.

One of the first things we did was get some NY pizza! Unfortunately, it tasted like it had been sitting out for a few hours, so it wasn't that great.



Next, we headed to Times Square! It had started to rain pretty steadily at this point so it was hard to get the full effect.

 



We headed to Rockefeller Center {didn't see any celebrities though}.

We stumbled upon the LOVE statue and I was really happy!

NYC sure does have some cool looking [tall] buildings

Trump Tower

One of the places to go to on my list was FAO Schwarz. It was a little crowded on the rainy Sunday, but we enjoyed ourselves!

I asked Chris to buy me a camel, but he didn't think it would fit into our carry-on luggage.

{on a side note, I'm pretty sure that someone offered my Pawpaw two real camels for my Mom once, I'm sure glad he didn't accept the offer!}

The floor piano made famous in BIG. The line was really long to try it out, so we just watched for a little while and then moved on.

They had a huge Lego section and even had a Jack Sparrow, Statue of Liberty, and Indiana Jones made out of Legos.

for $25,000 you could own this Barbie Foosball table.

After the toy store we headed over to Central Park. I was hoping to find the bridge that was in You've Got Mail, this one looked the closest to it (and I come to find out...right now...that it wasn't filmed in Central Park). We didn't stay long at all because it had started to downpour on us! I would've liked to go back on a sunny, warm day but the rest of our days were packed full. Next time we go to NYC, hopefully it will be a beautiful day and we can really explore the park!

The {in}famous subway.

 It was a very quick to get around the city and I could see how you don't need to own a car because of how efficient the subway is, but it's about 20 degrees warmer down in the subway tunnels!

The view of The Empire State Building from our hotel window.

Our friend Sarah is on her way to NY as we speak to go work for AMR/NYFD on their ambulance. We are so proud of you Sarah!!

The lobby of The Empire State Building.

We saw the entire city from the top of the building. It was amazing to look down and realize how high up we actually were. The view from the top:

We didn't see any apes climbing up the building, but we did buy a Christmas ornament that has Santa climbing up the side of The Empire State Building!

This was on Chris' list of things to see. There was a lot of construction going on inside so there wasn't much to see as we walked around it.

Parking! I would be a little nervous having my car parked like this, especially after the earthquake they just had!

Grand Central Station was beautiful: very echo-y, shiny, and full of people.

The famous clock. There is a new commercial that features this and although the commercial is really annoying, it makes me smile when I think "Hey, we were there!"

So many people going so many places!

One of my favorite places to visit was Greenwich Village. It was full of tree-lined streets, cute brick homes with brightly colored front doors. If I had to live in the city, this is definitely where I would want to be!

I had heard about Magnolia Bakery (on Cash Cab among other places) and we found one in Greenwich Village. It turned out to be the original one, so we had to wait in a little bit of a line to get inside.

But oh, boy, was that line worth it!

We got four different cupcakes to try. We each had one right away and we saved our others for when we got to the airport. Since coming home I looked to see if there was a Magnolia Bakery in CA and found one 58 minutes south of our home. That's probably a good thing because I could see myself stopping by for a cupcake often if it was any closer!

After our cupcakes we walked over to NYU and walked through Washington Square Park. It was full of people, performers, and even a man covered in pigeons as he fed them (I tried to covertly take a picture of him, but he watched us walk by so the only one I got was really blurry).

The Washington Square Arch.

We walked back over to the NBC studios to see if we could go on a studio tour, but the times they had available didn't fit in with our schedule.

We did have time to go to the Lego store though!

This reminded me of the bird man we had just passed!

The Lego artists are so talented!

After the Lego store we walked around the block and found another entrance for Radio City Music Hall.

My attempt at getting a picture of the entrance to Grand Central Station, while walking across the street, and trying to not get hit by a cab. There were multiple times that I wanted to yell "Hey, I'm walking here!" {in a NY accent of course!} as I crossed a street as cabs got a little too close, but I refrained.

We did a lot of walking, which is typical for NYC, so we were pretty tired every night. I was surprised at how quickly we adapted to the time change and seemed to sleep our normal hours.

We also went to the World Trade Center site and went to a few Firefighter Museums...Stay tuned for NYC part 7.2!