Final Day in NYC

Our last day in NYC we devised a master plan.  We would all go to Ground Zero together and then separate so that John could pick up the rental car while we visited the Museum of Natural History.  The first half of our plan went swimmingly.  The memorial at ground zero is incomplete and there is a lot of construction going on.  To me, the construction almost made it more meaningful knowing that it happened such a short time ago that they are still working on rebuilding it.

This tree is known as the survivor tree.  It was found in the rubble of  911 as an 8 foot stump.
It was nursed back to health and replanted at the memorial.

There are two identical water sculptures placed in the exact places that the towers were in with the same  outside dimensions.  I don't think they could have come up with a better tribute.  The names of the people who died are placed all around the outer perimeters of the 30 foot falls.

The motorcycle at the 911 Memorial Gift Shop that Paul Jr. from American Chopper made as a tribute.

After the Memorial we jumped on a subway and carried on with our plan.  The Museum of Natural History was 4 stories tall but we only made it to the 1st and 4th floor before we ran out of time.  There were some really cool displays.

This is a real meteorite

While we were blissfully soaking up mountains of knowledge at the same museum Night At The Museum was based on, John was having a little trouble at the car rental place.  It turns out that he lost his driver's license somewhere back in...Europe?  Unsurprisingly, National Car Rental would not release the car to him without one.  We had been planning on having him pick us up at the museum and then returning to the hotel to collect our luggage before heading out of town.  The kids and I had to make our way back to the hotel via subway and then hail a cab to bring us to the car rental place.  It's so strange that we should feel comfortable hopping into a car with a strange man just because his car has the word Taxi written on it.  That's what we did though and he turned out to be a nice man from Algeria whose only complaint about Americans was the way we pronounce our T's.  He has a point.  Once we arrived at the rental car place we had our car within 5 minutes.  Poor John had been waiting there for about 3 hours and was a little wound up.  Now it was 7:30 and we had a 6 hour drive before us.  Plus we needed to stop for dinner.  I wanted to stay in NYC for one more night and start out fresh the next day but John booked our hotel online and it was non refundable.  The happy ending to this story is that two negatives make a positive.  When John called the hotel to tell them we would be arriving late, REALLY late, they told him that they had no reservation for us until the next night.  Sweet!  We screwed up!  We get to pull over and get a hotel instead of driving all night!  Best mistake we ever made.

Execution

We have been gone for 5 weeks now and our trip is finally winding down.  Before the journey began, as I was planning and booking I had a lot of anxiety about how well our plans would be executed. Every time we’ve reached a new destination I’ve been tickled and a little shocked that we actually made it.  I like to keep my expectations low and that way I’m never disappointed.  There was really no reason to do that in this case but it has helped with some of the punches we’ve had to roll with along the way. 

One of the biggest punches that we had to roll with on the trip was the NYC subway.  I now see why it is the butt of so many jokes.  I usually left the logistics of traveling by subway for John to figure out.  But on two different occasions I ended up having to buy subway tickets myself because John was either trapped on the other side of the railing or in a different location.  What New Yorkers do so frequently that they don’t even have to think about was a terrifying ordeal for me.  To the credit of New Yorkers, all I had to do was slightly furl my brow and some nice man would come to the rescue. The first time this happened I am ashamed to say that I was skeptical and I really thought he was trying to take my $5.00.  That mind set comes from being in tourist Europe where everyone is trying to hustle money from you.  I guess New Yorkers are understanding because a lot of them know what it’s like to be new to the city.  New York City was almost more foreign to us than some of the cities we visited in Europe and I think they get that.  I feel kind of sorry for all those people who go there to visit because they want to see what it’s like in the U.S..  While NYC is a good place to start, they’re not really seeing the whole picture.  We sat with an English woman at breakfast one day who “politely” trash talked the U.S. as only an English person can.  I didn’t give away any of our secrets though.  I just nodded my head politely and listened. 

On Sunday morning we traveled about a mile or so to go to church.  Church in NYC is about the same as anywhere else in the world except that the building blends in with all the others and it is combined with a temple.  The only thing that was kind of comical about it were the tourists I watched come in and peer at the congregation that met after ours.  Undoubtedly having seen The Book Of Mormon musical, they seemed put out that we didn't have more entertainment to offer.  They soon left, seemingly disillusioned.  Sorry guys.  You get what you pay for.

After church we decided to take the Subway to the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty.  Liberty Island is closed due to the hurricane and won’t be reopening until July 4^th (how conveniently symbolic) so we had to settle for a drive by.  As you can imagine, it was hard for us to hide the fact that we were out-of-towners.  We don’t look anything like New Yorkers.  So when we boarded the Subway with slightly furled eyebrows, a loud man from New Jersey with a heart as big as his stature enthusiastically took us under his wing.  He started asking us about places we had visited and any time he mentioned a place that we hadn’t seen his eyes would get big and he would grab his head like he was being plagued by the mother of all migraines.  At one point, the train stopped and unexpectedly started heading in the opposite direction.   He was as surprised as we were but he lead us off the train and onto another one that was sure to bring us to our destination.  When this train suddenly emerged from its subterranean state to go over a bridge it gave us great views of downtown Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridge.  Despite our gladness about the unexpected sight seeing tour he once again assured us that this was the wrong direction and once again lead us off the train and onto another.  He was becoming increasingly more embarrassed with each mistake and I felt bad for him.  He clearly wanted to help us out and should have been an expert at the Subway because he takes it every day to work in Manhattan.  The problem was that it was Sunday and we failed to see the 8.5 X 11 papers that had been posted sloppily on a few of the walls about the train schedule being completely different on the weekends.  He apologized to us emphatically and I felt so bad for him that I wanted to come up with some sort of lie that would appease him.  “Actually, this is where we wanted to go all along.  How did you know?  What would we have done without you?”  Knowing we couldn’t get away with it, we did our best to reassure him as we stepped off the train, headed up to the street and hailed a cab.

View from the ferry

WTC. Amazing how the light shining up is just a reflection of the sun.  

It's so bright up here above the earth!

Oooooh.  Ahhhhh.

One thing that concerned us about being a large family in NYC was the Taxi problem.   No Taxi is allowed to carry more than 4 passengers at a time.  We learned quickly that that’s really more of a “guideline” and the cab drivers kind of follow a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.   We started off trying to be secretive about it.  John would distract the driver while 5 of us piled in the back seat.  We got bolder as time went on until we realized that they just plain didn’t care.  We got pretty good at hailing taxis.  It made us feel really cool too.  We were in different locations each time we decided to get one and each time it took us about 30 seconds.  It’s kind of empowering in a Fonzi sort of way knowing that if you want a ride all you have to do is snap your fingers and a car will immediately come screeching to a halt.

If the NYC Taxi's "anti family" policy could not deter us, the hotels were certainly no match for us either.  Throughout the trip, we all had our own individual beds but once we got to our tiny hotel room in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City we had to get creative.  It came with two double beds and no room for a roll away.  John, who is nothing if not resourceful, pushed the two beds together and we slept sideways, 3 by 3, legs overlapping.   This we did for 4 straight nights.  I am acutely aware of the hilarity of the situation but, honestly, no one missed any sleep over it.  Roll with it baby.

Day 2 in NYC

Despite the plethora of activities available to tourists in NYC I went with just 3 goals in mind.  I wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, walk through Central Park and catch a Broadway show.  When I found out the price of the Broadway show (times six) I decided that 2 out of 3 wasn't so bad.  We had heard ways of getting cheap tickets but none of them seemed to be panning out for us.  After searching for the Walmart/Carrefour of ticket sails and finding nothing, we stumbled upon a curious line of people standing outside of the Gershwin Theatre where Wicked is now playing.  There were only around 20 people in the line and they seemed to have a secret that we wanted in on.  That's how we found out about ticket lotteries.  If you go to a theater 2 hours before the show starts you can put your name into a lottery and you might win a $30 ticket.  That's pretty good when the cheapest ticket we could find before that was over $100.   We wanted to take the kids to see Newsies so the next day we went  2 hours before it started and stuck our names in the drawing.  Only half of us needed to have our names drawn because each winner won 2 tickets.  We figured we'd be lucky to get 1 name called and then we would spring for the rest of the tickets or opt for standing room only which is offered at the Nederlander Theater where Newsies was playing.  Imagine our delight when all of our names were called and we ended up having to turn tickets away!  The poor girl that John was standing next to had been at it all week with no success.  People waiting for their names to be called seemed a little chagrined to hear our surname called over and over again.  While the seats were not awesome, the show was fabulous.  What a great story!  And the choreography was amazing.  We came out of the show feeling like we'd gotten away with something and wanting to do it again.

Sydney and Bryton standing in line with their fellow lottery winners

Look who we ran into on 42nd St. after the show!  John's man-crush, Justin Timberlake!

                                                 
After a short visit with non-responsive Justin we decided to try our luck at another lottery.  Because all of the matinees had just let out, the streets were no longer just super crowded.  They were super crowded times 10.  When we saw all of the people, we knew that our chances of getting into another show were slim to nil.  Still, we decided there was nothing to lose, so after a few photo ops we headed over to The Gershwin theater to try our luck at the Wicked lottery.

Can you believe it?  The first one picked!

Once again we heard groans from the crowd as our surname was called twice in a list of 10.  The stars must have been aligned just right because our odds of winning were much lower in this lottery than in the first.  The two boys ended up opting out so we ladies could go together.  John and I had seen it in Denver already but it was a new experience seeing it from front and center.  Sometimes the actors looked right at you.  And we could peer down into the orchestra pit at any given time during the show and watch the musicians whom I felt deserved some sympathy glances for their amazing talents but were no where near as exciting to watch.

Day 1 in New York City

We were up bright and early our first day in New York.  We were so tired when we got to our hotel the night before that we were fast asleep by 9:00 and awake by 5:30.  That's not really very good since 5:30 is the equivalent to 11:30 in Paris.  Here are some pictures from our first days' adventures.

Times Square.  If you look closely you can see the New Year's Eve ball.

This picture will only be interesting to you if you are a David Letterman loyalist like myself

At the Hello Deli with Rupert from David Letterman!

An alternative to taking a cab

Central Park

Yoga in Times Square

Only the M&M store in New York could rival this 3 storied Toys R Us with a ferris wheel

Rockefeller Center

The Lego Store

Dwight Schrute

My favorite character from 30 Rock

Iceland

On our way back to The States we had a 7 hour layover in Iceland.  We thought about going to one of their natural hot springs.  It would have been an awesome way to pass the time but it was a lot more expensive than we had imagined it would be.  We ended up just sitting in the airport sleeping, having lunch and playing scrabble.  It was nice to have some down time since John and I had only slept for 3 hours the night before.  We did go out of the airport for a spell to do relay races.  It was about 50 degrees which I thought was quite cold for the middle of June.

Standing in front of "The End of the Rainbow" and "The Birth of the Condor" in Reykjavic

                                   

Scrabble

Pictures of Greenland from the airplane

Day 2 in Paris

Because we stayed out so late the night before, we didn't get back into the city until around noon the following day.  We walked over to Notre Dame

and then headed over to Luxembourg gardens for lunch.  One of our favorite things about Luxembourg was sailing boats.

Then we wandered in a little further and found a puppet theater about to start a show.  We bought tickets and watched the show in French.  We were able to figure out what was going on even though we couldn't understand anything.  In a nutshell there was a chef who wanted to cook some bunnies.  He sent someone out to get him some.   They delivered the bunnies in a box outside of the restaurant.  Before the chef found that they had arrived, someone walked over and wondered why the rabbits were stuck in a box and set them free.  There were two different shows.  The second was very similar to the first but now instead of being on the street they were on a rooftop.  The chef didn't have anything to cook but then he found a kitten and decided to cook it.  He put it under a pot and while he left to get something, someone let the kitten out and put the mama cat underneath the pot.  The chef received a huge pouncing when he got back.  The little Parisian kids got such a kick out of it and just laughed and laughed.

Cute puppet theater

By the time we got out of the theater the skies were dark and foreboding so we walked quickly over to take a riverboat tour that we had purchased tickets for in advance.  It rained for the first 15 minutes of the hour long cruise but when the sky cleared up we had the entire boat to ourselves.  It was a great way to see Paris.

The Eiffel Tower

The first thing we did in Paris was to visit the Arc de Triomphe.  It's an impressive structure built to honor those who fought and died in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.  When we reached the top of it, we had great views of the Eiffel Tower and spent lots of time taking pictures with it in the background.  After word we headed down the highly recommended avenue Champs de Elysees which reminded me a lot of Las Ramblas in Spain.  Like in Spain, we tired of it quickly and soon retreated to a closer view of the Eiffel Tower.  Like the cows in Switzerland, we could not get enough of it.  When you think about it, really it's just a tower.  It shouldn't be that big of a deal.  But it is!  It's absolutely amazing to look at and I'm not sure why.  We ended up spending the rest of the day with it.  After taking a rest on the lawn right in front of it we decided to go in.  There was a bit of a delay because someone had parked their bike and locked it right under the tower and the police had to call the bomb squad to have it checked out before they would let anyone in.  It turned out to belong to someone who thought they'd found the perfect parking spot.  Imagine how they felt when they came down and their bike was no longer there.  The "bomb" ended up being a good thing for us because the lines had all but disappeared and we got right in.  Because we didn't learn our lesson in Switzerland about taking a ride when one is offered, we hiked up as far as the 700 stairs would let us go.  Which was only about half way up but was still really, really, really high.  The views of Paris were amazing of course.  When we got down we headed to yet another Carrefour and bought dinner.  We carried it back to the grass in front of the Eiffel Tower where lots of people were sitting and waiting for the lighting of the tower.  It reminded me of going to City Park on the 4th of July and waiting for fireworks.  Right now it doesn't get dark in Paris until around 10:00 so we were there for a long time.  I never got bored of looking at it though.  At one point John went with the kids over to the park and I stayed in our spot people watching.  Here are some observations I made about Parisians:

• They always have to kiss each other when they are greeting one another.  It doesn't matter what gender they are.  If one person joins a group, he/she goes around and kisses every single person in the group.  If two groups happen to meet up, everyone in the first group must kiss everyone in the second group.  
• I'd say about 80% of Parisians smoke.  And they seem to start young.
• Some Indian Parisians were going around trying to sell bottles of wine illegally to the people waiting on the grass.  They had their wine bottles in green bags and they were trying to be discreet.  Their stealth must have in some way been compromised because at one point a group of about 5 of them went bolting past me, threw their bags safe and sound in some trash cans and kept on running.  Well, I had been observing a group of teenagers between 13 and 15 years old sitting on the lawn near me who were all smoking as though they'd been doing it for years.  They saw the whole thing happen with the Indians and one at a time they started getting up and going digging in the garbage cans.  I watched them conspicuously as only a substitute teacher can.  I knew what they were doing and was wondering what they were waiting for.  I guess they were waiting for me to turn my head because I only took about a 10 second break from craning my neck and when I turned around again, they were gone.  It was funny to watch the Indians dig through the garbage cans scratching their heads once the coast was clear and they returned to continue their dirty work.  

The lighting of the tower was better than expected.  They didn't just turn on the lights but did about a 5 minute twinkling show before they turned the regular lights on.  We didn't start for the subway until about midnight and we got home right around 1:00 A.M.  We were all exhausted.

Frustration of the day:

Whitney has a small bladder and when she says she has to go, she means business.  I took her to the only bathroom near the Eiffel Tower and there was a sign up that said "Closed for cleaning."  Great.  So we walked into some bushes in the park and she did her business there.  What else could we do?  Well, we went back to that same bathroom about an hour later and guess what.  There was a sign up that said, "Closed for cleaning".  No worries.  I know the perfect place to go.  Back to the bushes.  After climbing the Eiffel Tower it was finally opened and we saw that there was a bathroom attendant just sitting there for no reason that I could guess.  She wasn't collecting money or anything.  Just sitting and observing.  My guess is that she had been taking her 3 hour lunch break during the "cleaning" time.  Well, right around 10:30 p.m. when we went back one last time there was a man there blocking us from going in.  He said they were closing.  When we looked at the sign it said that they weren't supposed to close until 11:00.  He said they had to start closing now or they would never be able to close.  I looked around and there were only about 3 people standing around.  We argued with him about letting our kids use the toilet but he was bound and determined to go home early.  So, back to the bushes we went.  As we were approaching, there was a man coming out zipping his pants up.  Nice.  Apparently we weren't the only ones at the Eiffel Tower that day that needed a water closet.

Arc de Triomphe

View from the Arc de Triomphe

Nice shot, John