New York, New York!

Well, yesterday was our big trip to New York City. What a day! We had to get up pretty early in order to catch our 7:58am train. The train was PACKED, so we all had to sit separately, not even in the same car! Once we finally got to NY, the first thing Zoe said was "Mom, look at all those cabs!". We were shocked by the sheer volume of people and vehicles that were everywhere! The sidewalks were so congested it was hard to move at times. All you could hear was people talking and traffic horns!

We were all hungry once we got off the train so we wanted to grab a quick bite at Pizza Hut (the first place we saw). Ew. The food was good, but the place itself was disgusting! There was water all over the bathroom floor, pee all over the floor and toilet seat, the tables were filthy and the place itself was just gross. If I knew the address I would post so no one would make the same mistake!

As we were walking block after block the girls started to get a little ahead of us, which we figured was ok since we could still see them and we were all just walking along. But, what we didn't realize was that neither of them were paying any attention when they were walking (or where) and as they were going along, they failed to notice that the "walk" sign had changed to "don't walk" and they were standing in the middle of the road when we noticed a car speeding down the center lane, straight at them. I think the three of us (Tony, Dottie and I) noticed at the same time, and Dottie screamed "Girls! Get out of the road!". Kiersten turned around and ran back, but Zoe hesitated and was nearly hit by a car. It is hard to express in writing how close she was to being hit by that car, but, not one of us was able to speak for awhile after that happened. I was caught between wanting to kill her and kiss her. I was leaning towards killing her though. She just scared the hell out of us all.

When we first got off the train the weather was overcast and cool, and not long after it started to pour. Not rain, but full out pour, thunder/lighting, the works. (BTW, thunder sounds totally different in the middle of a city! Kind of muted and echoey! It was pretty cool!) We had wanted to pack very lightly, so we stuck two (really) small umbrella's in our bag before we left home. There were 6 of us, why only 2 umbrella's? I don't know. Any ways, we ran for cover under a newspaper stand, but it was really raining and we were all getting pretty soaked so we decided to run back the way we had come to the shelter of a Starbucks. Well, as we were crossing the street, Zoe lost her flip flop in a puddle. Instead of turning around to pick it  up she just yells, "I lost my shoe!" and keeps running across the street! Boy was I mad! I mean, what the heck was she going to do? Walk around the rest of the day with only one shoe? So, I run back across the street, grab her shoe before it goes down a drain, and wait in the rain (again) for the light to change. Once I got to where they all were I was pretty mad. Zoe was really having a rough day...and at this point I was too. Any how, the rain finally let up and we headed back out.

We headed out to Rockefeller Center because Tony was dying to go to Nintendo World. I didn't really know what to expect of the store, but it wasn't all that exciting. They had tons of DS lite's and Wii's set up where you could try out the games, but other than that it was all stuff you could find anywhere else. All except the T-shirts, maybe.  One cool thing they did have though was an interactive screen with Mario on it. You could walk up and ask him questions and he would answer you. He started up a conversation with Landon and he was just amazed. (There had to be someone sitting somewhere, talking back to us, but we sure couldn't figure out where!) I wish I had brought the video camera for that part, we all thought it was so cool! Maybe next time...

The Lion King started at 2pm, so we got there a little early and were glad to have somewhere dry to sit. The show was really awesome and I was really impressed with how good all the characters were. The costumes and backdrops and stage props were all really amazing, as well as the singing. The character whose singing I thought was just beautiful was the woman who played the part of the grown-up Nala. She sang a solo that was just beautiful. Landon was a little bored with it, but everyone else seemed to really enjoy the show.

The weather was beautiful when we got out of the theatre, so we walked back towards Rockefeller Center where there was a street bazaar going on. There was a stand selling gyro's, so Tony and I just had to get one. They were great, a lot messy, but so worth it! Kiersten and Landon ended up eating at a Mexican stand and Zoe found one of her favorites, a corn dog. As we ate we looked at the various stands which included jewelry, t-shirts, novelty NY stuff, reggae music etc... We ended up buying some t-shirts and getting outta there. We have never seen so many people in our lives, it was just shoulder to shoulder, jam packed.

Since our train didn't leave till 8pm, we walked over to the Empire State building to see how much it would be to go to the top to look out...at $19.00 a person it was a waste of our walk! So, we walked out to 12th avenue to see if we could see the Statue of Liberty, but we were too far away to see it, so we headed back to Penn Station. We were all so tired and ready to get home! It's about a 2 1/2 hour train ride, but it is nice to be able to get up and walk around instead of having to sit the whole time like we would have had to if we had driven. And, I really can't imagine ever driving in New York City!

I made a slide show for the photo's, there were just too many to put in this blog since it's already this long! Thanks for reading!

Oh yeah, since I love Project Runway, I wanted to make sure to get a picture of Parson's: The New School for Design where it is filmed. The Hershey store was in one of their episode's (they had to make clothing out of the stuff they found in the store) so I got a picture of that too! I looked all over for Mood Fabrics, but I couldn't find it! Next time...