Jared had a business trip to NYC, and had a free companion ticket with his AMEX card, so I decided to tag along.
Loving the NYC night sky from the plane.
We arrived in NYC about midnight and were greeted with a limo.
We stayed at the London which I HIGHLY recommend. The rooms are all suites and are very large, and have free wifi and free fridge. Those are usually things you have to pay for at a nice hotel, but this one was the same price as comparable hotels in the area. We were 5 blocks from Central Park, one from 5th Avenue, and about 5 from Times Square.
We had one free day all to ourselves and I had our itinerary planned by the hour. We fit a LOT in that one day. We started with breakfast at Sarabeths, directly across the street from Central Park. Our meals were huge, reasonably priced, and could have easily been shared. We had eggs benedict and ricotta lemon pancakes. Both delicious.
Then we walked around Central Park for a couple of hours until the American Museum of Natural History opened.
Loved this tunnel with the vines, so I HAD to take a kissing picture in front of it.
The line at AMNH was HUGE but went quickly. I loved AMNH! I had already planned what areas we would want to see, so we knew where to go. Unless you’re spending a couple of days at the museum to explore every area, you have to know what you want and where it is. A lot of it is like a dead zoo, which didn’t intrigue me, but the stuff we did see was very interesting.
The section on evolution with these skeletons that are hundreds of millions of years old was probably the most interesting part.
Apparently there’s HUGE fields of dinosaur bones like this one. The thing in the middle is just the reflection from the light overhead.
The TRex from the movie Night at the Museum.
We wanted to show Halle how big a Pteranadon is since they look so tiny on the PBS show Dinosaur Train.
After that we walked back through Central Park to FAO Schwartz. During that walk Jared MADE me sit down. I couldn’t believe the audacity. I was on a schedule! Though I must admit it did feel good to rest my legs momentarily after 7 hours of walking, but it was that much harder to stand back up. We were hungry and exhausted, but it was only 2 pm and had much more sightseeing. Lunch was an amazing pepperoni pizza and caprese salad. I ate the salad all myself because Jared doesn’t like them, and it was so good. Pizza in NYC is so much better than the typical pizza in Utah restaurants.
After that we walked to the Empire State Building, a 24 block walk. We took a “minor” detour into a church and multiple stores on 5th Avenue, and into Grand Central Terminal. I was planning 30 minute walk to ESB, but with our stops I think it was more like an hour and a half. But totally worth it. After seeing the Empire State Building we walked to Rockefeller Center, then we headed back to our room and ate our leftover pizza for dinner.
Gorgeous chapel:
Grand Central:
You can see Central Park way over there in the distance.
State of Liberty view from the ESB.
Awesome day 1.
Day 2 we had business breakfast and lunch. Lunch was in the the financial district, so we toured down there.
Halle thinks it’s so cool when her or Eli’s names are on something, so I took this picture for her.
Times Square.
World Trade Center 1.
Ground Zero. Simply beautiful and touching.
Survivor Tree. From 911memorial.org: The "Survivor Tree", a Callery pear tree, was planted on the original World Trade Center plaza in the 1970s. After 9/11 workers found the damaged tree in the wreckage, reduced to an eight foot stump. The tree was nursed back to health in a New York city park and grew to 30 feet tall. In March 2010 the tree was uprooted by severe storms, but it survived again, and was returned to the WTC site in December 2010.
Brooklyn Bridge:
George Washington was inaugurated here:
New York Stock Exchange. They no longer allow visitors.
A beautiful chapel at the end of Wall Street.
We then had dinner reservations at Maze inside the London. This is the “cheaper” restaurant inside The London, but it’s still Gordon Ramsay food. I was SO excited to eat here, and was not disappointed. So excited that I didn’t take pictures of anything but dessert.
If you go to NYC and, like us, can’t afford to eat at The London, then you really must try Maze. We all got something different and all enjoyed it.
Then we walked to Broadway to see Once The Musical. It was lovely, and we immediately purchase the soundtrack off Amazon when we got home. Times Square at night:
The next day we had a Mets game for business. It was hot, humid, and quite miserable. I’m not exactly a baseball fan, but when it’s paid for by another company you put on a happy face and “enjoy” every moment.
For dinner we went to an Italian place. Jared got 101 layer lasagna which I didn’t expect to actually be 101 layers, but it appeared to be true to its name.
It was in the middle of dinner when I got a call from my mom, “How do you know if Eli has pneumonia?” Great. I ran back to the hotel to Skype and knew he was in bad shape. He got a cold Wednesday morning and in less than 36 hours couldn’t breathe. I forgot to send inhalers with him (the pediatrician assured me with a cold that moved that fast they likely wouldn’t have worked anyway, but I still felt guilty). My brother had a nebulizer so Eli used that and felt much better, but only for an hour. Those treatments should last at least 4 hours. I knew he needed to see a doctor. My mom drove him to Primary Children’s (while I cried in my hotel room). On the way his tummy didn’t feel good and he threw up. Poor kid. Poor grandma. He got steroids and more breathing treatments and they arrived back home around 3am.
Luckily we were flying out the next day. When we arrived at the airport, expecting a 3 hour wait until we could board, we noticed another flight boarding to SLC. We walked up to the counter, asked if they had any space for us, and sure enough they let us on. I asked about the flight change fee and she said something like, “We’re already boarding, so everything is closed and I can’t exactly charge you.” Fine by me. Poor Jess (did I mention Jess was there too? I don’t think so.) had already sat down and ordered some food somewhere, so we ran back, waved goodbye, and left him behind.
We got absolutely EVERYTHING done that I wanted. It would have been nice to go to the crown of the Statue of Liberty, but those tickets were sold out through October, so I didn’t let myself get down about it. It was a lovely trip!
