Until Next Time NYC!

Sunday, June 09, 2013

Well, we got a little more sleep than the night before but still not very much.  I think it was 6 hours.  Once again we got up, went to breakfast and then came back to the room to shower, pack our bags, check them at the front desk and head out for the day.  Our first stop was the Today Show.  We had to wait about 30 minutes but the crew finally came out.  Pretty sure we made the broadcast and hopefully our dog/house sitter was able to hit record on the DVR in time!. 

      

Next we walked past/through Rockefeller Center  and then up(?) Madison Ave.  Sadly we were on the wrong side of the road from Tiffany’s.  The city was getting ready for the big Puerto Rican parade so there were A LOT of officers out getting staged in various locations. 

We made it to Central Park and walked around a bit.  One of these days, I’ll run through there.  There were lots of runners, bikers, dog walkers and several softball games going on. 

      

Back through Times Square, we caught the Gray Line and headed to the 9/11 Memorial area.  The line moved quickly to get tickets.  Almost too quickly as they wouldn’t really let you stop and look at all the stuff in the museum.  Got our tickets and then realized that they were “time specific” and our time wasn’t until 2:00PM.  But after about half an hour, we decided to chance it & try to get in anyway.  NO PROBLEM.  They weren’t even looking at the times; just as long as you had a ticket for that day. The area is very surreal.  Sadly, I never got to see the Twin Towers in person.  I’d like to go back and see it all again when they have finished building everything. 

   

    

After that we then walked over to see the Statue of Liberty area & Battery Park.  It was a very short walk and a nice area.  We found a bench and waited for the Gray Line to come around.  Well…we waited and waited and waited.  We saw two of them but they were going the opposite direction.  I told my husband after 30 minutes, that we needed to make sure we were in the right bus pickup area.  So I started walking up the road.  Sure enough, we weren’t!  So I called him on his cell phone and told him to head up the street. Too funny.  Of course if we weren’t on a time restraint it wouldn’t have mattered but we still had to ride the bus all the way back around to Times Square and get our luggage, grab a taxi & get to the airport.

    

     

But everything worked out, we made it to the hotel in plenty of time and not long after we were in a taxi on the way to the airport.  Quick “editorial comment” about Gray Line – although our first tour guide wasn’t the best when we got on there on Saturday, the second trip with them on Saturday and then on Sunday’s trip, the guys were great.  Mostly they all pointed out the same things but each of them had a different flair and “opinion” of the area we were going through.  I’m glad we used that mode of transportation.  We got to see more of the city that maybe we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise and we got to hear different stories.  Well worth the money spent.

One last moment of panic as we are getting out of the taxi at the airport and he pulls away…our camera is still in the backseat!  Luckily since we were yelling at him, that caused the entire area ahead of us to yell at him as well and he stopped and we got the camera back.  That would have sucked to lose those pictures. 

I’m happy to report that all of our flights back home were on time and even slightly ahead of schedule.

I definitely want to go back to NYC one of these days.  And although I prefer half marathons over full marathons, after seeing the city, the boroughs and the bridges it make me want to do the NYC Marathon.  You never know….