Day 5: Empire State of Mind

(From Sunday) "Start spreading the news..."

We woke up in New Jersey into NYC through the Lincoln Tunnel and arrived at our hotel, The Wellington. It has a great location very close to Times Square and is one block down from Carnegie Hall. A wrestling scene from the movie Borat was filmed in the lobby. How classy. Seriously, out of all the movie scenes in New York this is what we land on? The hotel is nice, though, and the suite is sweet. We said goodbye to the car and will be using public transportation and our own eight legs for the rest of our time here.

Our first big sight was Times Square. We just walked from our hotel. We saw the New Years’ ball and the big 2010 lit up as well as several advertisements. After this, we went to the Empire State Building and to the top for the observatory. We found a friend up there.

The observatory, 86 floors up, offers a stunning 360 degree view of the city. We also did this exhibit called the Skyride which is a simulation of a helicopter ride (with Kevin Bacon!) throughout the city. It was fun, and Mama laughed so loud the entire time. I think she is the most excited to be here. It’s always been a dream of hers to come to NYC, and here we are!

Next we went to Chinatown and Little Italy for a little shopping. It’s just like you’d imagine. Lots of shopping, food, and Chinese. Everyone wanted to sell us their knockoff sunglasses, purses, watches, etc. There were also markets with fresh produce and fresh, stinky seafood. City aromas are, well… city.

Daddy wanted to see the Brooklyn Bridge, so we felt the best way to do so was walking across it ourselves. There is a sidewalk built above the auto-traffic for pedestrians and bikers, each with their own lanes. We walked the length of the bridge (1.13 miles) and back.



After this our legs and feet were pretty tired, so we found a shady spot to sit down as we pulled out our maps to look very touristy and plan our next excursions. We walked down to Ground Zero where the site was covered in construction fencing and full of cranes. We could not see into the actual place where the Towers were, but there is a museum opened as a 9/11 Memorial Preview with pictures and information about what Ground Zero will look like when the memorial is finished. One of our guides today told us they are rebuilding a tower, Freedom Tower, within the site which will be 1776 ft. tall. (500 feet taller than the Empire State Building!) We also saw Wall Street and the United Nations, both of which seemed very quiet today. We plan to go back to Wall Street tomorrow or Tuesday when the traders are out. We saw Donald Trump’s Tower, Saks Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, the Saturday Night Live studio, Radio City Music Hall, Waverly Place, Parsons’ Design School (where they did Project Runway), Battery Park, The NYC Free Public Library, the Flat Iron Building (also known as the Daily Bugle from Spider-Man), and The Late Show Studio, all from the outside. We also had a great view of the Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn at sunset.

We walked back to our hotel and stopped for some famous New York Cheesecake on the way. We are now back at the hotel where we are resting our weary legs and planning for an early morning’s adventure to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.