Sunday, October 24, 2010

NYC Day 2

I am currently sitting on a mountain of pillows on a four poster bed, in a white fuzzy bathrobe, and I smell like lemons.
My feet however, ache, and I think I might have literally walked my hips out of socket.
Today Everette's brother Brad took the day off and showed us around the city.
First of all, we need to discuss the room we are staying in...
Brad is the manager of a relatively well-known high end hotel in New York City. It may or may not be on Park Avenue and 50th.  Specifically, he manages the section of the hotel where guests stay for extended periods of time, or even live.
The room is gigantic, and amazing. And there are piles of pillows... soft, sinky pillows.
I just soaked my tired legs in a HOT HOT water, in a deep tub, only after we ate red velvet cake from Room service.
Below is a video tour of our room. And you can see Everette in his jammies. It is four or five minutes long so you might want to go to the bathroom first.

Hotel Room Tour from Everette Mills on Vimeo.


Back to today and my tired feet....
We woke up this morning got dressed, and Brad met us at our hotel at 9 AM. We headed first to ground zero. Sadly, (well I guess not) they have started to rebuild and there wasn't much to see. We did walk into St. Paul's church, a church right across the street from Ground Zero, that in the days following September 11, became a place of rest and refuge for the volunteers.  You could see the scuff marks left on the pews from the Firemen's boots. It was quite remarkable. I didn't take any pictures, because, honestly, it just didn't seem appropriate.
One neat thing, was a priest vestment was donated, and during the following months firemen, and police men attached patches from their stations onto the vestment. In the months and years following visitors to ground zero brought their own similar patches and pinned them on. It was completely covered.

Next we headed to wall street so Everette could get his picture taken with the bull. The front was occupied so we headed to the rear.

I predicted before we arrived, that this picture would be the only one in which you will be able to see Everette's real genuine smile.  You can judge for yourself.

We decided we ought to get our picture in the front, since we were there.


From there we went to Battery Park to get our tickets to the Liberty/Ellis Island Ferry.
The wait was about an hour, but it gave Everette a chance to have a very cold, very salty soft pretzel from a street vendor. I made a much wiser choice (in my opinion) and opted for sugared almonds. They were tasty.
(A crappy picture of how LONG the line was for the ferry)
 
After disrobing to walk through the metal detectors we boarded the Ferry.

We opted to bipass the statue and head to Ellis Island.

If you read earlier posts I predicted Everette would spend a great deal of time reading everything there was to read in the entire museum. I was not wrong.
I pooped out with a few exhibits left, so Brad and I headed down to the cafe for a cup of coffee while Everette finished up.
We then trucked over to the Brooklyn Bridge.


I figured after we hit the halfway point I would just keep on going, just to say I walked to Brooklyn, but when we reached the halfway point.
 
I decided it wasn't worth it, and if walked across, I would have to walk back.
We met Meghan just back over the bridge and after stopping at the most disgusting Starbucks in the world, to pee, we headed to Little Italy, by way of Chinatown.
We accidentally made a wrong turn, which turned out to be a FANTASTIC detour. We headed down a street with rows and rows of tiny Chinese food markets. The kind that have buckets of live frogs and barrels of fish stacked up on ice. THere were roasted ducks with the head and beak. There were baskets of dried shrimp. It was awesome.
We finished with a delicious dinner. And walked through Times Square.


(This is a store dedicated entirely to pop tarts.. you could order them and eat them right there)
 
(There was a ferris wheel inside Toys R Us, and one of the cars was the Little Tykes Cozy Coupe)
 
And back to the hotel through Rockefellar Center.
Sadly, that isn't even everything we did today, but my mountain of pillows is call my name, and we have a full day tomorrow.

1 comment:

amberbahler said...

I am totally impressed! We did NYC at the end of 2008, right before Christmas. I remember the awe of NYC and Manhattan as well as my aching legs (at 6 1/2 months pregnant) and the nearly 3 feet of snow on the trip out. (OH! and I got pooped out at Ellis Island-its a neat place but can be pretty overwhelming.) Hope the rest of your trip is as fantastic as the first part.