New York City

Larry had a four day weekend this past weekend and we decided to take advantage of that and go to New York City! Neither one of us have ever been there before, so we were very excited to go an experience “The City”!

We left California (Maryland) after Larry got done flying on Wednesday, April 8. I think we finally left the house around 6:00 pm. The drive was uneventful – Larry drove the first half and I drove the second half. We each got to drive through a tunnel – Larry’s was in Baltimore and mine was in NYC! I’m not sure that I have ever driven through a tunnel before, so that very well could have been my first one! We arrived in NYC around 11:30 and got checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Hilton in Times Square and highly recommend it to anyone that is in need of a hotel in New York City. Once we got into the hotel room, we gave Alex a bit more milk before putting him to bed. I was getting ready for bed and all the sudden Larry yelled my name – our sweet baby boy had puked all over the bed, my pillow that I brought from home and himself! Other than when he was a tiny baby, he has never thrown up and I think he was a bit concerned with what had happened. We called down to the front desk for someone to come up and change our sheets and comforter, changed Alex out of his icky pajamas, and threw my pillow away! Once we had taken care of all that, we finally got to sleep!


We woke up bright and early on Thursday morning – ready to tackle our first day in New York City! We had 48-hour passes for a double-decker tour bus and had planned on taking the Downtown NYC tour during the day on Thursday. Before boarding our bus, we decided to get tickets at the bus company for the Statue of Liberty! We rode the bus around the city and it was great! We were able to see so many sights – again, we highly recommend this to anyone that is planning on visiting NYC. We rode through Times Square, rode through 5th Avenue and all the shopping areas, toured a few of the ethnic areas, went to see the World Trade Center site and stopped at Battery Park. We were excited about going to see the Statue of Liberty, but quickly discovered that the line to get on the ferry was over 2 hours – completely impossible when you have an active toddler with you! We decided to cut our losses for the tickets and not spend the time waiting in line. We did take plenty of pictures from Battery Park and had the opportunity to test out our new zoom lens for our camera! After looking at the Statue from a distance, we got back on our tour bus and continued our tour of downtown NYC! Once the tour was over, we decided to go back to the hotel room to chill out for a little while before dinner. We had dinner that night at a place in Times Square called Chevy’s – we had great “Fresh-Mex” food and wonderful margaritas!


After dinner, we decided to hop back on the double-decker tour bus for a nighttime tour of New York City! I have one word for it – INCREDIBLE! New York City is absolutely beautiful at night – it is so lit up and so neat to see! We took a trip over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn and had a beautiful view of the NYC skyline! Another tour that we highly recommend! Once the night tour was over, we stopped by the best cheesecake restaurant ever…JUNIORS! It was the best cheesecake that I have ever eaten! After Juniors, we went back to the hotel room for the night and went to bed fairly early. It is hard to stay up too late when all three of us are sleeping in the same room!


On Friday our first stop was the amazing Toys R Us in Time Square. For those of you that don’t know…Toys R Us has a Ferris Wheel in the middle of it! It is four stories tall! When we first walked into the store, we had the following picture taken of all of us:

After that, we went to look around the store and tried to decide if we needed to buy anything. Surprisingly, we walked out of the store with no purchases (well, except for the picture of the three of us). When we got done walking around the store, we decided to take Alex on the Ferris Wheel. We were lucky enough to get to sit in the Toy Story car, which is a VERY popular movie with Alex right now! He loved the Ferris Wheel and could not stop looking around and smiling – it was so cute! When we left Toys R Us, we decided that it was time for lunch and Larry and I looked for a New York Deli. I had an awesome pastrami and corned beef sandwich and Larry had a pastrami sandwich (amazingly, it was his first and he LOVED it). Alex had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and he loved it (for those of you that remember, he was not a fan of peanut butter when he had his first pb & j sandwich a few weeks ago). Once our bellies were full, we hopped back on the tour bus for a tour of uptown NYC. We were able to tour Harlem, Central Park and a few other uptown hotspots. After the bus ride we headed back to the hotel room to get ready for dinner and have a little downtime!

For dinner, we attempted to go to Carmine’s, but we were unsuccessful. The wait was just too long for us (mostly because of the active toddler I have previously mentioned!), so we left Carmines. We headed back to Times Square and walked around for a little while before heading back to the hotel. We put Alex to bed a little while after we got back to the hotel and turned in early for the night also!

We left New York City after eating breakfast at the hotel on Saturday morning! We had a great trip and I hope we get to go back as a family before we leave Maryland.

Here are a bunch of pictures from our trip:

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