The Big Apple

After a crazy late night entry into our Jersey City campground we awoke to our view out the front of the motorhome in the RV park. We made it!

We rode the subway into the city and all around for 2 days.

Our first stop was ground zero. It is amazing how much construction has occured since almost 2 years ago when Nelson and I flew home on our way home from Europe. This tour is a must do if you visit New York. The tour guides are volunteers who have some sort of connection to that day. This man volunteered for 8 months afterward folding flags for the fallen and other things. Our other guide lost her son that day. It is very moving and emotional to be there and think of what went on that day.

Next we went by the New York Stock Exchange, had a yummy deli lunch and then on to the Empire State Building.

Here it is, raining at the top.

Here are the kids in Grand Central Station at 5 PM. It doesn't look so bad, don't you think?

At 5:30 we went to the theater where Wicked is playing. The show was sold out but they have a lottery to see who gets the last 28 tickets for $25 each. Well, we didn't get any of our names called so we moved on. So sad for us, we really wanted to see Wicked.

We went to dinner at Ellen's Starlight Diner. It is a way cool diner with wanna-be Broadway stars for waiters. They take turs on the microphone singing to the customers. It was really fun.

We got tickets to Mary Poppins after not winning the lottery. It was a great show! The set and special effects were really fun.

After the show, we wandered around Times Square. It is like broad daylight with all of the neon lights.

After that, we took a bicycle taxi to the subway station to get back to our motorhome. It was a crazy ride sharing the road with real taxis and us behind bikes!

The nex day we went to Liberty island to see Lady Liberty. We were so fortunate to get tickets to the crown. July 4th of this year they started letting people in again since 9/11. They only let 240 people a day into the crown. All you need is reservations, just for crowd control, I'm sure. It was so awesome, though. Because we had crown tickets, they let us skip this HUGE line of people waiting to get in to the museum and to walk around the observation level at the base. Then when we were done with the crown, we got to go in the back door to the museum and not wait, again!! Definitely worth it.

Here we are clinbing to the crown.

Here is looking out of the first window in the crown. This is the tablet she holds.

Inside the crown. What a view from up here!

Here is the fam with the NYC skyline behind us.

...fam in front of the statue. We seriously asked several people to take our pictures before we got a good one. No one could notice that they didn't get the statue in the picture, also.

The highlight of NYC, for me at least, was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here are the kids in the Egyption wing. We saw mummies, armor, and great paintings.

We didn't see the thinker, but here are our thinkers. Nelson and David spent some time appreciating the masters, up close, far away and just pondering. I loved this part of the museum, Renoir, Vermeer, Seurat, and of course, my favorite, Monet. It was so great!

The stroll through Central Park was nice after being shoulder to shoulder with humanity for the past 48 hours. It is a beautiful park. We had a fun time in the Big Apple!