Pretty much the first thing we did in New York City was to go on a Big Onion Sampling Tour of the Lower East Side. It mostly covered the Jewish Quarter and Little Italy, but the Chinese have been encroaching so it covered that too. This was our guide. It rained the entire time which really sucked!
Here's Brad eating fried plantain, we also had kosher pickles, this other jewish dessert that I forget the name of, it was made out of chickpeas with some chocolate and tasted a little like peanut butter, chinese candied rose petals (gross!), chinese candied prunes, fresh mozzarella, fresh parmesagne, sopressata, and cannolis
This is at the Pickle Store. It's pretty crazy, apparently when the jews built up the jewish quarter, pickle stores were everywhere! Now there are only two competing stores left. Apparently it's very important that the pickles are made under rabbinical supervision or else they lose all their business! The pickle we ate here was dang good! I would go so far as to say the best I've ever had.
During our tour, we stumbled upon The Doughnut Plant (owned by a Jewish guy if you're curious), which I'd heard has just about the best doughnuts anywhere! I couldn't pass it up! We had a couple hours between the tour and our dinner reservation so we trekked back and got a couple. I got the tres leches, their most famous one...delicious! And here's Brad eating their Mango doughnut (mine was better)
Here's Brad waiting for our table at Gonzo, an italian restaurant in the village. It was our one, hip New York restaurant splurge. They're known for their pizza. On the whole I have to say the food was, meh.
Our first night we saw the musical Jersey Boys. We'd been warned that there were alot of swear words. Brad thinks they said the "f" word about 100 times, I'm thinking around 60, but seriously, it didn't ruin the musical for me one bit! In fact, a bunch of street kids talking in Jersey accents wouldn't have sounded right without them. I loved it and had "December 1963" stuck in my head for days!
Brad loves having his picture taken at a Broadway Musical!
Here's me with my brand new Kate Spade knock off purse that I got on canal street! I was really worried at first because it seemed like they only carried Dolce and Gabbana in the front of stores and I am really partial to Kate Spade, I think I would buy every purse from her! It turned out to be extra great though because I got to go into one of the ultra secret back rooms to go pick out my Kate Spade, awesome!
Brad LOVES to have his picture taken at Grand Central Terminal! (this starts our second day in New York)
They have a market at Grand Central that has a cheese store so we bought some Camembert and some Gruyere to have for lunch with a baguette. I was in heaven! They also had Neuhaus, my favorite Belgian chocolatier! Yes, I did buy $40 worth of chocolate that I ate before leaving New York!
This is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They have a temporary exhibit called Jeff Koons on the Roof. Obviously, it was awesome.
We also had to check it out for the view from the roof
Fourteen Year Old Dancer by Degas, the one piece I really, really wanted to see. There was also a superheroes exhibit that was really cool but pictures weren't allowed, we saw a bunch of costumes from the movies and designer outfits the superheroes inspired. In the Greek and Roman art there was a statue of this man with a really tiny head. I loved it.
I decided we should take a shortcut through central park back to Broadway. It didn't work. That's why we don't have any pictures in front of Mary Poppins, which is the show we saw on our second night. We didn't have time to spare! I liked Mary Poppins, but not as much as most shows. For one thing, we had the understudy for Mary Poppins! We were totally shafted! And the understudy had an understudy for her normal role and in the end there were four roles played by understudies on the night we went and that's pretty hefty! Mostly the show made me want to go get the movie and watch it. But, for the kids roles they rotate between three kids and we had Lila Coogan for Jane Banks. If you go to the website for Mary Poppins and look her up, you can see her picture from the playbook. I love her little smirk in the picture! It made me instantly like her!
Here's our hotel room. I had to take a couple pictures of this place because I cannot believe that I lucked upon it! It's the Hilton Newark Penn Station. We paid $130 a night. We took the train from DC to Newark and took a skybridge right to our hotel (and they let us check in at 10am!!!), and then we could take Path into Manhattan for $1.75, it was around a twenty minute ride. And when you take Path to the World Trade Center, the last couple minutes of the trip actually go through the construction zone from the twin towers! It was amazing to actually be down in the construction. Anyways, our room was super nice. I don't think we could have gotten a nicer room for that price, even in Utah!
Here's the World Trade Center, not from in the train
We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. Brad stepped on my shoe, causing it to come off, I'm thinking four times!
After the bridge, we walked around Brooklyn Heights for awhile. I LOVED that neighborhood! There are a lot of brownstones, with beautiful brick and awesome metalwork. And there's alot of old growth and greenery that just makes it cool and cozy.
This is along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
We had lunch at Waterfall Cafe, a tiny middle eastern restaurant. I think the owners are Lebanese. This place is awesome, mostly because it is so cheap! Our lunches were $8 dollars each which you really can't beat for a nice sit down restaurant in New York. And they were tasty!
Then we took the Metro from Brooklyn clear up to the North Central Park station and walked from the top to the bottom of Central Park. This is in the North Woods.
We saw a raccoon!
The reservoir was my all time favorite! You just can't beat the water, with the greenery surrounding it and the tall mist enshrouded buildings in the background.
Broadway is just below Central Park and on the way to the Path station. Weird how the only pictures of Times Square are the ones I took on a day when we weren't seeing a show!
(Fourth Day), here's Trinity Church in the old town! We saw the grave of Alexander Hamilton there!
Here's Brad on Wall Street!
The New York Stock Exchange
Battery Park
Cruise To the Statue of Liberty
Ellis Island
We had Monument Passes which we were so happy to have! They don't cost any more than normal passes to the island, but not very many are given out each day. Since we ordered our tickets a couple months ago, we were able to go inside the pedestal of the statue
Full Size Replica of Lady Liberty's face. Apparently it was constructed using the same techniques as the real statue.
And her feet
This is the really famous peom written by Emma Lazarus about the staue of liberty
We weren't able to go into the actual statue. They closed that off on 9/11/01. From the top of the pedestal, though, we could look up through windows to her innards.
Ellis Island again
Here's the view from the Empire State Building. I'm glad we went, but I have a love-hate relationship with that tour. I HATED how they were always trying to make you buy stuff. It's was like, "here's a pamphlet about a map you can buy, and here's one about a flight simulator, and lets herd you through a place where you can have your picture taken to buy, and lets herd you past another place where you can buy maps and/or audio tours and you can upgrade your tickets here, here, here, and here, and we're also going to make you go through our gift shop on the way out and then screen you to make sure you didn't steal anything from our gift shop." That sucked. The view was awesome! It made our trip really come together when we could see how everything we'd seen fits together. That being said, a few minutes up there and we were done, making the $17 a piece a pretty steep price for a few minutes entertainment.
Our last day was our street food day. We went to a gyro truck I'd heard about before the statue of liberty and had Philly Cheesesteaks that were way good. But the best was a vendor on fifth avenue called Rafiqi's. It was relatively cheap, even for street food and delicious! I had a lamb and rice plate and Brad had a gyro meat and sausage sandwich that were so good! And both these places have this hot sauce that is way hot, but probably the best tasting hot sauce I've ever had!
Here we are back in DC! Brad's dad, Gary, is Director of the Press Office at the Pentagon so we took a little behind the scenes tour on the day we got back from New York. This is the actual briefing room where they give press conferences/make statements and whatnot.
In grandpa's office
Here's Kyle riding the subway!
We went to the monuments on Saturday, our last day there. I thought it was awesome, it was the first time I'd actually done something meaningful on Memorial Day weekend
Playing around at the Washington Monument.
This is the WWII Memorial
Kyle and Pops in front of their birth state
And me
And Erica
Kyle feeding cheerios to the ducks in the reflecting pool!
The Lincoln Memorial
The Korean War Memorial
The Jefferson Memorial. It was great because I've seen quite a bit of DC before but we got to go to a few places I'd never been to before: the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR Memorial (LOVED it!), and the old Post Office.
FDR Memorial
Kyle applauding the orchestra that was playing at the Jefferson Memorial. They were a really bad orchestra! They were high schoolers who have probably only been playing for a few years but they were so out of tune it was ridiculous! And you'd think they'd be better since they got a great gig!
Kyle and Brad at the Old Post Office
You can take the elevator/stairs and climb up to the tower in the old post office and get some great views! and it's free
The End!
