Silas and I had 4 amazing days in NYC at
the end of July! The trip was his confirmation present from Søren and I, and I
think I probably was just as excited as he was.
The day started out with driving in a Tesla for the very first time. At nice UBER man named Mark picked us up at 4:45am and we were off to the airport. We enjoyed some peace and relaxation from the beginning just being 2 people traveling together. It gives a whole different atmosphere. The flight went well and we arrived in Newark New Jersey. We quickly found the train station and within in an hour of landing we arrived in NYC!!
We were very hungry and Silas got to pick where we should
eat lunch, so we ended up at.....
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McDonalds!! |
Yep McDonalds. We found an amazing coin-offer and paid only $11 for both of us...New York wasn’t looking that expensive!!
At around 1 pm we were ready to hit the city.
We found a place to store our luggage (many stores offer this service,
so it was just a tourist store) and we
were on our way to the Empire State Building.
Ahead of the trip I had been a bit worried about long lines, and not
being able to get tickets, etc, but in the end decided that it as nice not to
have everything planned out ahead of time, and just see how it all went. I told Silas this plan, and that I was
practicing letting go of control and being in the moment, and he was on board
with helping me with that! Turns out you
could get right into the Empire State Building and the tickets were actually
cheaper at the door!
We went up the 86th floor and the view was amazing! It was fun to be at such an
iconic spot! There was also a lot of information about the building process
with interactive features, and you could look through telescopes to see city
monuments far away! (Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, etc.)
Silas bought a souvenir – a model of the Empire State building – as he collects
these things.
Then we spent a couple of hours looking
around the area there, shops, buildings, people. One of the coolest shops we
went into was FAO Schwartz which is a toy store, right at Rockefellar
center. They had lots of unique toys,
and people at small booths demonstrating the different things, so that was fun
to watch. And Silas and I got to play
the famous roll-out piano on the top floor!
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FAO Swartz |
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Famous Piano from the movie "Big" |
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Silly pictures for his brothers |
We spent a couple hours in our very small
hotel room reading and relaxing. Silas
had gotten a magic trick set at FAO Swartz and he used his time practicing
that. We decided we were going to try to
go to this diner we had heard about from a man we were in the security line
with in Minneapolis. It is called
“Stardust” and the waiters and waitresses are all aspiring musical stars who
sing songs throughout the night. We
arrived at the location a little after 7pm and the line was all the way down
the block to get in!! It was a very
popular restaurant and didn’t take reservations. We thought about if we wanted to wait in
line, not knowing if we’d be waiting 30 minutes or 2 hours, and decided to
commit!! We had a good time just talking and people watching in line, and after
only 50 minutes we got in! We had a delicious meal and heard lots of amazing
songs. Everything from musical solos and
duets, to pop songs with dance and confetti! It was a lot of fun.
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Bruh - long line! |
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We're close now! |
After dinner we went to Times Square to see
it with all the lights on! We were in awe, and found new things to look at all
the time. We found fun stores to go in,
the Pelé store being a favorite, with all types of soccer jerseys you could
imagine for sale, and some signed jerseys that were cool to look at.
Finally we were tired and went home for a
good nights sleep.
Day 2 started at the perfect time for Mary and Silas – around 9.45! I was up a
bit before and I woke Silas up at 9.45 to get a start on the day. We had
decided to go visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island which is on the
south part of Manhatten, so after stopping for some really cheap bagels, with
way too much cream cheese on them, we got to sit in the air-conditioned subway
car for 30 minutes down to the Ferry.
Again, not planning turned out fine and we got right in line for the
Ferry. Again it was 96 degrees and there
were A LOT of people who had the idea to visit Miss Liberty that day. We waited in line – which was more of a big
pack of people, standing very close in the really hot weather. Right when we thought it would be our turn,
just 2 families in front of us, the man closed the gate and we’d have to wait
for the next ferry. Oh well, Silas was
so positive and we just turned on our spray fans we had with us. Then as the ferry arrived and people started
to get on, the families in front of us, just shoved open the gate and started
pushing in line – Silas and I, as the do-gooders we are, stayed in place, but
then everyone behind us started pushing past us – and for fear of getting trampled
we went ahead with the pack, just as the guard came back and started being
stern with everyone saying “NO ONE RESPECTS THE GATE, JUST GO”....
We went up on top of the Ferry and had
amazing views of Manhatten as we sailed away.
We also got great views of the Statue of Liberty. On the island with the Statue of Liberty there
was a great museum where you could learn all about the building of the Statue,
etc, and a great video as well! Silas
loved the videos at the museums 😊 Then the Ferry went on to
Ellis Island – and that was also interesting with the stories of immigration
etc. We also got to see a movie there,
that was both encouraging but also a bit sad with the conditions so many
immigrants endured on their trip to USA.
As we queued up to get back on the Ferry, Silas and I talked about that
we could imagine what it would be like to be squished together in a big boat –
but that the immigrants had a lot more at stake.
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Ellis Island registration building |
The Ferry rides took much longer than we thought, so it was 4:30 before we were back on Manhatten and we were so hungry for lunch. We found a NYC pizza place and bought pizza by the slice and took it back to our air conditioned hotel. We spent a few hours there, and then it was time to see HAMILTON!! We had decided we would go to dinner after the show since we ate lunch so late!
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Subway |
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Our tiny hotel room |
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Pizza and AC! |
Hamilton was A-MA-ZING! We just have to start out saying that. Silas and I knew the music very well, and knew it was fabulous, but it was even better live. We were so in awe of how the cast sang and danced the entire time. 2 hours and 45 minutes of music! We loved all the details of the set, with a rotating circle that would serve as changing rooms or scenes, or bring props in and out. Of course all of this was done gracefully and fully integrated with the music. There were some really funny characters that added their own spin to it, and really got the audience laughing. At intermission Silas asked “there is still a whole half left, right??!!” – he was so glad we got to see more.
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Outside the Theater |
The only thing that wasn’t 100% amazing about Hamilton was the actual theater. Richard Rodgers theater is absolutely beautiful, but it is really small and there was not a lot of room to walk around upon arrival, or the intermission – and the seats were really close to each other, so no leg room either. Silas and I agreed it was good Søren wasn’t there. After a day of being squished together with other people in the Ferry lines, we were about done with the tight quarters. The craziest thing though was that it was almost impossible to get to the women’s bathroom during intermission. I finally got over to the bathroom line, and I hear a woman behind me was saying very rude things about a lady who cut in line to her daughters. I realize that she is talking about me! I turn around and say, “Are you talking about me?” And she said, “Yes, didn’t you see the line was wrapped all the way around in the theater – you just jumped in from the side.” I hadn’t realized I did this, so I apologized, but could not really see how I would get out of the line and make it to the back, so I just stayed put and let her give me the evil stare down. 😉
After the amazing show, we headed to find some dinner. But we got distracted by lots of fun
stores. The Hershey’s store with lots of
unique products. The M&Ms store, where
we designed our own M&Ms to bring back to Søren! And we
had to go to the Pelé store again to see if the Manchester United number 1 was
in stock so Silas could buy a jersey with their new player – Mbeumo!
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Hershey's Store- Lots of Reese's! |
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McDonalds again! |
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View from our hotel room. |
Day 3 we had decided we would sleep in again. We started our day at 10am – found an even yummier bagel place that made egg and bacon bagel sandwiches for Silas, and then rented bikes to bike around Central Park. After biking 4-5 blocks on the crazy New York City streets to get to Central Park we finally made it, unharmed thankfully, and found out that the bike path through Central Park is more like a wide street on the perimeter of the park. You can’t actually bike in the middle of the park. After the initial disappointment of that, we tried to think biking as taking the metro around Central Park so we could see more of it. But again it was 96 degrees and we were hot! We ended up using only 2 hours in the park and walked our bikes in a few places and otherwise just biked the loop. We were glad we did it. When we went to return the bikes, the guys just said – okay thanks, have a nice day! I noticed right away that he hadn’t made me pay – I thought about it 2 seconds, and then said to Silas – we never paid. He said, yeah, I thought of that too, we better pay! And of course we went back to pay. There was another customer nearby and he said “Wow, how nice to be so honest, you must not be from New York.” 😊 That made us all laugh!
Finally at 4:30 we were starving and wanted some lunch. We found another pizza by the slice place and ate our pizza while walking to Brooklyn Bridge, which we still wanted to walk over! It was still really hot, but it was a great walk! Lots of beautiful views of Manhatten behind us, and the bridge itself was beautiful as well. We took a little break under the bridge and headed back to our hotel by Subway.
After a rest at the hotel, we went to Hard Rock Café for our last meal in the city. On the way home we hit a few souvenir shops and each bought at T-shirt to remember our time.
The travel home could be a store on it’s
own, but I will keep it brief. We had a
hard time finding our train – but after asking for help, made it just in time!
We had to wait on the runway for over an hour before taking off, due to air
traffic scheduling. There was no air on
the plane, so we were all sweating, in the still 96 degree heat! I thought I
was going to have a panic attack I was so uncomfortable and claustrophobic. It was really awful, but Silas showed me a
cool game for my phone so that helped, when I beat his high score on
Blockus! We ended up having to take a
detour in the air and arrived 2.5 hours after we were supposed to in Minneapolis....just
in time for rush hour traffic going out of the city. Søren picked us up, him and the boys had also
had a great few days back home!
We had such an amazing time together Silas and I. It was so relaxing to travel with Silas. He was patient, thoughtful, funny, excited and really good at finding directions! We had great talks and got to experience so many new and exciting things together. Memories I will forever cherish. How lucky am I!!
Here are some random pictures!
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Sweaty faces! |
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Doing magic tricks |
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On the way home to MN |
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Beautiful church |