New York City - Day Three!

    Thursday dawned rainy and cool.  We again rode the bus into NYC and made our way to the Subway station.  After figuring out how to pay and ride, we descended below ground (where it was dry) to hop on the Subway to the Financial District.

Calissa making her way to the correct subway platform.

After we got off the subway, we were a bit turned around.  Some nice man tried to give us directions to the financial district, but we ended up having to stop and pull out Google maps.  We passed this beautiful church (Trinity Church) on the way.

Then we found Wall Street!

We visited Federal Hall (with a statue of George Washington out front).

Inside Federal Hall.

And found the New York Stock Exchange.

Then we walked to the bull and the new statue of the girl standing in front of the bull.

Trav looks like he's holding a selfie stick, but it's really an umbrella!

As we made our way down to the Statue of Liberty tours we also came across the US Custom House. There are so many beautiful buildings in NYC!

Then, we boarded the ferry for the Statue of Liberty.

Trav and I managed to get a good picture, even in the rain.

We quickly got off the ferry, took a picture from the back, Conner took a bathroom break, and then we boarded the same ferry.  We were anxious to head to the 9-11 memorial.

We walked through the wind and rain (umbrella's turning inside out kind of wind) up to the 9-11 Memorial. It was beautiful.  We went into the museum and spent several hours looking through all the information they had there.  Such a amazing museum.  It was a different experience with the kids since they had no first-hand knowledge of the event.  Conner was 2 when it happened and I was pregnant with Calissa at the time. I'm so glad that we took the time to go!  I just wish it hadn't been so crowded, but we still got to spend enough time and see enough there.

When we came out it was absolutely pouring!!  We walked as quickly as we could to the nearest subway station and headed back to Times Square.

We walked to dinner at the Shake Shack and then did some souvenir shopping on the way to see Wicked. Calissa really wanted to see Wicked and we ended up getting to buy some of the seats from the choir that they were trying to sell. 

It was a terrific show and I'm glad we got to see it again!

After the show it had stopped raining and we were able to go to the Top of the Rock for our 10:15 reservation.  We got there and there were hardly any people there!

We took a few fun pictures before going up the elevator to the 69th floor.

Don't fall off!

The views from the top were absolutely amazing!

The Empire State Building

A family selfie from the Top of the Rock!

After our amazing couple of days it was time to head back to the hotel for one last sleep before continuing on our journey!

New York City - Day Two!

 Wednesday morning we woke up and headed into the city on a much more crowded bus.  We all had to sit separately.  The guy right behind Calissa had to go to the bathroom and created quite the stir on the bus that morning!  Once into the city, we headed to Central Park.  

We rented some bikes and headed on our way exploring.

It was a gorgeous day!

A beautiful view of the lake in Central Park.

 The rode most of the way around the 6 1/2 mile loop before stopping at the Museum of Natural History.

 But first, we needed a stop at this food cart, Wafels and Dinges.  Oh my goodness ... so very yummy!

 After finally finding a place to chain up our bikes (harder than you'd think with only one lock),

 we headed into the museum.

 Teddy Roosevelt

 The kids were a little disappointed with Rexy ... they thought he should have been bigger.

 It's a beautiful building!

 After paying and seeing a film about the universe, we started exploring the maze of a museum!  This is the museum in the "Night of the Museum" movie, but it didn't look much like the movie.

Here is Calissa with a life-size blue whale!

 We found something from the movie!

 Travis with a meteorite!

It truly was a maze and we didn't even see all of it!

 Everywhere in New York has these rotating doors!

 After leaving the museum and finishing our ride in Central Park, we returned our bikes and took off on foot.  We walked to St. Patricks Cathedral. 

 It was so beautiful and so big!

 The stained glass windows were absolutely gorgeous!

 Here is the Rockefeller Building.  So tall!

 Grand Central Station

 Lots of people in Grand Central Station.  We happened to be there around 5:00 at night, but it's such a cool building!

 After a dinner of pizza we visited the New York Public Library.

 It's huge!  Calissa wanted to know where all the book were!  We found out it was a research library, so they have no fiction books there!

 After stopping for an ice cream, we made it to our show "The Play That Goes Wrong."

Even the playbill was a bit of a mess.  It was a hysterical play that had us laughing so hard we were crying!  The write up said ... "If you like a ramshackle set, a leading lady with a concussion, and a corpse that can't play dead, then this is the play for you." 

After the play was over we headed back over to the Rockefeller Building to go to the "Top of the Rock." Unfortunately, because of the great weather the line was out the door and they had no more tickets available for that night. It was supposed to rain on Thursday, but was supposed to stop around 7:00 pm.  We decided to book our tickets for the next night around 10:15 pm and hope for the best!

After walking 11 miles today (and riding over 7 miles on bikes) we headed back to the hotel.

New York City - Day One!

 Calissa's choir was supposed to go to New York over Spring Break to compete and Trav and I were going along as chaperones.  At the beginning of February, her choir teacher ended up cancelling her choir because not enough of the girls were planning on going.  Once that decision was made, we decided to get our money back and go on a trip as a family.  We talked about going to Yosemite, a church history trip, a trip to Disneyland and the Dodgers, a trip to New York, or a trip to Las Vegas (Grand Canyon, southern Utah, etc.).  We were going to vote on Family Night, but that afternoon I had the thought that maybe we could combine some of those trips.  We called it the "New York hybrid."  We decided that we'd spend a couple days in NYC and then rent a car and drive to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, then travel to Palmyra and Fayette for some church history sites, and then on to Niagara Falls. That was the top choice and we booked an awesome trip.  We left Tuesday morning, bright and early and took BART into the San Francisco Airport.

 We had a direct flight into Newark, NJ and took Uber to our hotel. It was our first experience with Uber and it worked great! Once we checked into our hotel, we had dinner and then headed into the city after a short bus ride.  We arrived to the hustle and bustle of NY!

 Times Square!

 NBC Studios and 

 Radio City Music Hall!  We tried to go to the "Top of the Rock" that night but when we arrived we found out that the top was fogged in, so we decided to go back the next night. 

 After we left Top of the Rock, we saw this bakery that Marci had recommended.  They were known for their banana pudding.  Trav said it was yummy.  We had a good brownie and blondie as well.

After getting a snack we headed back into the heart of Times Square and visited M&M World and the Hershey Store.

 All four of us squished into the photo booth at M&M World.  Our last picture was supposed to be a "mad face" but we couldn't stop laughing!

 More of Times Square!  It's crazy there with so many people and so many lights.  This was at 10:00 pm!

 Look who we met up with in NYC? Tyler and Teri were there visiting Tyler's mission and happened to be there the same night that we were.  We met up with them and headed over to Dave and Busters to play some games.

 We played for about an hour or so together. Calissa and Trav trying to win some tickets.

 Conner and Tyler racing each other. 

 Teri and I racing each other. The boys were better than we were.

We parted ways around midnight and headed back to our hotel.