Day 28 - New York City - Part II

Kathryn gave us some NYC tips over a nice breakfast this morning.   We headed in to lower Manhattan first thing to check out the financial district. We walked down Wall Street past the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Reserve buildings. We also saw a statue of George Washington in the location of his inauguration as the first president of the United States in 1789. Just across the street is Trinity church so we went inside to see the stained glass windows.

Our next stop was the World Trade Center museum. Inside we saw videos of the neighborhood prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The museum then took us through the events of that day in the words of those who were there. We saw pieces of the buildings along with artifacts that were found in the rubble. The most humbling part of the experience was seeing the missing posters and pictures along the walls. I said a silent prayer for those who lost everything that day and for the families they left behind. The experience was a touching reminder of a day that none of us will ever forget. Remembering the events of that day reminds us what really matters in life.

Next, we took a nice walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. The views of the city are spectacular and despite some strong winds we had nice, sunny weather.  When we reached the other side we shared some peaches & cream ice cream at Brooklyn’s Ice Cream Factory. My sister Aimee loves NYC and had given us a few must-eat recommendations. We took the subway to the upper west side where we picked up hotdogs and fresh juice at Gray’s Papaya. They were very good and had a unique sweet flavor to them. While in the neighborhood, we hit up LeVain Bakery.  Now, this place is incredible.   The cookies are really big but we decided to try two different flavors, chocolate peanut butter chip and chocolate chip walnut.  The cookies are nice and firm on the outside but perfectly gooey inside, just how I like it. The chocolate peanut butter chip is our favorite.

On our way through Times Square to buy some Broadway tickets we ran into the Governor of New York. He was on hand to assure everyone that things were safe in the wake of last week’s terrorist attempt. We managed to score two tickets to “In the Heights.”

We headed down to Soho for some Lombardi’s New York pizza before the show.  On Mike’s recommendation, we ordered a meatball pizza and it did not disappoint.  If it sometimes seems like our traveling revolves around the food places we want to try out that’s absolutely right. We finished our pizza just in time to run to the subway and head back up to Broadway.

We really enjoyed the show, very entertaining, and very New York. We decided to stroll 5^th avenue and walk past Serendipity on our way back to Kathryn and Mike’s place.  After snapping a couple pictures at Serendipity, we hopped on the subway to head back. So far I had done ok navigating us around the big city but tonight the subway got the best of me. I now know that when selecting a subway in NYC there are three important rules to follow. 1. Select the correct line. 2. Select the correct direction on that line. 3. Know whether you are on an express (skips certain stops) or a regular line. I broke rules 2 and 3 tonight and Britt was nice enough not to make me feel like a complete idiot. So, after an hour-long detour it felt so good to get back to the apartment…for 5 minutes. That is when we realized that the camera and all of our photos from Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, and NYC were missing. We searched through everything we had and needless to say I got the silent treatment for the rest of the night. Sometime during our subway detour from Serendipity to the apartment it disappeared (aka I was pick-pocketed on the subway). So, this explains the lack of cool pictures on our recent posts. It was a huge bummer but we still have the memories.