New York - Part 2

After visiting Wil, Alicia and Jaxon, we decided to take the kids to NYC (still, my favorite city on earth--    so far).  It always seems like a really good idea when we are planning a vacation, we have such short-lived memories of what it's like to travel with kids.  For the most part, we had a great time and the kids did really well, but I think it will be a while before we take them someplace like this again.  Even with  one adult per child (my dad was with us), it was still exhausting to keep track of everyone all the time.

We decided to drive through Harlem on our way to the hotel.  What a great place!  I think it would be so fun to go to a baptist church service there someday!

The Apollo Theater

When we got into the city the first thing we did was go to see The Adams Family with Bebe Newarth and Nathan Lane on Broadway.  It was great, the kids loved it (well, Crew loved the parts he was able to stay awake for).

How appropriate the statement on the poster is at times.

Not the greatest quality iPhone pics, but I love the one of Hailey, she looks so pretty!

We had dinner that night at a great little Italian place where they had a 95 year-old piano player who came around and took our requests.  Crew requested "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

A rare moment of sibling love...(although Paige is still a bit resistant).

The next morning we headed out to Essa Bagel, which according to several native New Yorkers Jim had consulted, has the best bagels ever.  Being a bagel-loving family, we had to try it.

Jim got the garlic bagel with herring spread, kudos to him for being adventurous, yuck!

It's so nice to catch the kids in the moments when they're getting along.  I should post pictures of the fighting to keep it real, it's definitely not all sunshine and roses all the time.

The kids loved the pigeons and the taxi's.  Paige took this picture while we waited outside the bagel place.

After Essa Bagel, we walked over to The American Girl doll store.  The girls thought it was amazing!

Crew had no interest in the doll store and told us that if they got to go to a "girl" store, that he wanted to go to a "boy" store.  We didn't make it to FAO Schwartz (which I'm ok with, it's so overwhelming, maybe someday), but we did go to the Lego store at Rockefeller Center.

That afternoon we went to Central Park and took a tour via rickshaw since the kids had already been walked to death all morning.  This was definitely worth doing, it was the most pleasant hour of our trip!

We stopped for a Spider Man popsicle.

We visited the section of the park called Strawberry Fields which pays tribute to the late John Lennon.

This is where he lived right across the street from the park.  Yoko Ono still lives there.

The kids were really excited to see the bridge from Enchanted, their favorite movie.

I can't remember why Paige and Crew are mad here....like I said, not always sunshine and roses.

A perfect tree for climbing.

I love all of the architecture, all the different people, the food, the shopping, oh, I could go on forever.

This woman was out just picking up trash in the street and it obviously wasn't an easy task for her.  How great is that?

I love all of the outdoor markets with the fresh flowers and food!

Of course we stopped for a street vendor hot dog and pretzel.  I love the expression on the vendor guy's face.

The next morning we took the subway down to Ground Zero.

I was so paranoid that the kids were going to fall on the tracks.

Getting off the subway...

This is where they are building the Freedom Tower.  We didn't have much time to go through any of the museums or anything, we had to catch our plane that afternoon.

Paige stopping to smell the flowers...

These were the flowers in our hotel.

We had lunch at this really cool bakery before we left for the airport.

We had 3 random celebrity sightings in our short 2 days in the city!  First, Jim, (with his celebrity eagle eye) spotted Hoda Kotb trying to hail a taxi after running.  She had a hat on, it's weird that he even recognized her.  He was so upset that I didn't get a picture of her (he was driving).



Then, Jim struck up a conversation with George Takei on our way back from dinner one night.  It was pouring rain and I was up ahead of Jim trying to hurry back to our hotel and Jim yells to me and gestures towards this man.  I looked at him like "What???" He had to apologize for my ignorance, obviously, I never watched much Star Trek.







On the second day, we were walking around the city and saw Mariska Hargatay from Law and Order, SVU.  I don't even watch this show but I noticed her walking and then when I saw her  get into a big fancy trailer I realized who she was.


And, then the naked cowboy, but I'm not sure he counts as a celebrity. 

And that's that.  All in all, this was a really fun vacation.  I'm glad we went but I think it will be at least 5 years or so before we take the kids into the city again.