TK Hits Manhattan

There was a time, not that long ago (ok, 20 years) when I was younger, fitter, and maybe a teensy bit more energetic and I lived in New York and I ran subway steps and was out till 2 or 3 in the morning with friends doing who knows what, and it was fun and interesting and crazy.  Fast forward to 2017 and I am older and fluffier and I have kids and I don't have a job that requires me to even leave my house.  But one of my kids is OBSESSED with New York City and her most fervent desire every time I ask her is that we go to New York.  I took her on a trip to the city 3 years ago when Ine was here (how is THAT possible?!) but she was only 5 and she fell asleep for half the day.  So during a recent review of what we could do for fun before Astrid goes home, the subject of NYC came up again.  And we agreed as a family to go together--there had been the possibility of Astrid going with the AFS kids, but we didn't get the channels of communication got crossed and didn't happen.  Consequently, we made plans and everyone got to choose what they wanted to do when we went to the city.  Astrid had two destinations in mind:  Ground Zero and the Statue of Liberty.  Leah had very few notions in mind other than "New York City!", possibly walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, and staying in a five star hotel (spoiler alert: DID NOT HAPPEN!).  I was excited because a play I had seen 3 years ago in London has made its way to Broadway and I wanted to take the girls to see that, plus I wanted to try out that cookie dough cafe that made the rounds on Facebook not too long ago.  Vague plans were formulated and I got reservations for the Statue of Liberty (hereafter known as SoL or "Libby" as we dubbed her) as when we took Ine, we weren't able to get inside.  I was happy to be able to get cheap train tickets, although it did require some off-hours travel, which I knew would be a challenge.  However, I figured with having a hotel to crash at, it would be OK.

So Friday night, we went up to Springfield to see my niece, Dot, perform in her first school play.  It was a lengthy production, spanning approximately 2 1/2 hours, so that we got back to my sister's after 10PM.  We were staying there as she lives much closer to the train station.  We got all tucked into bed and her kids decided to have a little slumber party with us, but everyone settled in.  I didn't sleep much at all, being nervous about my car starting (the battery died twice in the past couple of weeks), plus about the alarm going off (for some reason the alarm on my iPad won't ring), and just general anxiety about everything going smoothly for our trip.  When the alarms sounded at 2AM, we were up and moving and ready to roll.  Leah was VERY excited, I was exhausted, and Astrid was cold.  Haha  We got to Union Station in DC with no trouble, got on the train with no trouble, and by 3:15AM were on our way.  I did manage to doze on and off on the way north, though I'd by no means call it good sleep.  Leah and I shared a seat and she kicked me a good part of the way there, as we were fighting for real estate.  Astrid slept for a while but wound up having to share a seat with a neighbor who felt like being chatty. LOL  I think she can tell you his life story!  We arrived at Penn Station at 6:45AM and because there's really nothing open from our itinerary at that hour, we decided to have breakfast.  We grabbed McD's and there was no seating anywhere so we wound up finding a few seats to commandeer at a Starbucks, even though the signs in that establishment issued dire warnings about seating being for customers only.

Astrid, Leah, and Dave the Llama riding the rails of the 1 Train

Once we were done, it was time to tackle the subway.  Now, back in the day, it was a token for a dollar and you were done.  Since then, the subway system has upgraded to passes, and I'd thought I'd be able to get a 1 day pass for us for each day, but I really couldn't figure that out and so I just started throwing money at the machine till we got some passes.  I only got passes for me and Astrid, figuring Leah was probably free.  I've since investigated and she's 4 inches taller than the free fare allows, but no one stopped us from having her duck through, so I'm not going to fret about it.  If I take her back, I will absolutely pay next time ;-)

Our first stop of the day was the Ground Zero Memorial.  This was Astrid's first choice, and not something I was especially keen on doing as I remember that day all too clearly and a boy I grew up with died down there.  I knew it would be emotional.  But I also knew that it is important both culturally and historically, so I decided we would visit the memorial and just not go into the museum.  Astrid was OK with this plan.  We took the subway down to near the site and started walking.  As we were making our way, we saw a Target.  Nothing would do but that we had to go in there and do some serious make up shopping in the city.  So I plugged my phone in for a little while and Astrid looked at make up for about 30 minutes.  She was so happy.

Back on our way, we found the memorial area with no trouble.  There is a lot of fencing up and construction in the area continues.  We found the fountain that is on the footprint of 1WTC and walked around it, reading all the names as we searched for the name of Shannon Adams, the man I knew.  We Walked the whole way around and couldn't find it, and I was really emotional just being down there, on the verge of tears the whole time but choking them back because the girls don't like to see me upset.  There was  a cop there, and I asked him if there was somewhere to look up a specific name.  He asked me a few questions about Shannon, said "I'm usually pretty good with names" and then pointed us to a kiosk where you can look up your person.  We strolled over and looked up the location, found it, and as we walked back, the officer was standing at the memorial waving to us.  When we got back, I said, "Gee, you're faster than the computer!" and he smiled and said, "I knew I'd find it." and then left us.  Such a nice guy (Astrid pointed out he was single and I should marry him. Haha  She's only got 3 weeks left to find me a husband as she promised to do!).  I cleared the rain off Shannon's name and cried a few tears quietly, and as we turned around, the sun broke through the clouds and the rain stopped.  I know that sounds like a cheesy Hollywood ending, but it was incredibly moving to me.  I took a few pictures and we left.  I was glad to have gone, but I was also glad to leave.

I don't know what this is.  We called it the Balloon Animal Sculpture

Fountains in the footprint of WTC1

The new Freedom Tower

Sun breaking through the clouds over the Memorial

Dave, Leah, and Astrid aboard the Liberty Island Ferry--
Libby is barely visible behind them

By now it was 8:30 and we headed down to Battery Park to catch our ferry over to Liberty Island.  We had a 10:00 reservation for the pedestal, and when we arrived at 9:00, I thought maybe we'd have to wait till then to get on the boat, but nope!  They let us in early when I asked.  YAY!!  We got through security, and Leah's little stuffed llama Dave was the star of the show!  We got on the boat and onto the island by 10:00AM, rented a storage locker for our backpack (we had all our overnight stuff with us) and then headed up to see Libby.  There were a lot of people up there and it was pretty crazy (I would LOVE to shoot the inventor of the selfie stick), so we didn't spend a TON of time up there, but got to walk around the entire thing, see the skyline, ponder what would happen if we had to jump off the statue armed with a parachute (Leah), considered finding Willowbrook Hospital and seeing if we could find Cropsey (Astrid), and felt better about the state of the country (me).  Yeah, we're an interesting crew!  We finally went back down and took some pictures.  Astrid and Leah made friends with a little German boy who was clutching a toy lion who got into some sort of animal noise yelling match with Dave the llama (turns out none of us knows what kind of noises llamas make), and then we got on the boat back to Manhattan.  The boat stopped at Ellis Island, and although we didn't get off there, I did get to tell the girls the history of the island and we marveled at the irony of a bunch of kids wearing MAGA hats while standing on the Island.  It was a beautiful day for a boat ride and we had no trouble getting around.

We found a Danish flag at a memorial in Battery Park

Astrid and Leah atop the SoL's Pedestal, looking at the Skyline.  Or something

Looking up into the inside of the Statue

The boat ride back to Manhattan

Our theater destination

Once back on the "mainland" (although Manhattan itself is an island), we hopped back aboard the subway and rode up to Times Square.  We emerged onto the street and absolute bedlam.  Saturday afternoons are theater matinee time, which was also why we were there, but they have also developed some "initiatives" to make Times Square more interesting, including letting people dress up in costume to take pictures with tourists (several people got very aggressive with grabbing Leah's arm to take pictures--which of course aren't free), putting out odd looking chairs, and the installation of pedestrian traffic flow barricade things that are supposed to make pedestrian traffic flow more smoothly (they don't).  We made our way to 45th St. to the Lyceum Theater to pick up our tickets for The Play That Goes Wrong, and right next door is the new location of Planet Hollywood.  We were all pretty tired by then, so I figured "Good enough!"  That's where we ate lunch.  We got to see Harold Ramis's Ghostbusters uniform and Tom Hanks's Forrest Gump Army Uniform, as well as a dress Kate Winslet wore in Titanic, amongst other treasures.  We were still early for the show, so did a brisk walk in the area of Times Square before the show and then finally were able to settle in and enjoy the play.

As I mentioned, I saw The Play That Goes Wrong three years ago when I was in London and it was just opening up.  It was absolutely HILARIOUS, and I loved it.  When I got home from that trip, I started following them on Facebook and Instagram and I was thrilled that they were coming to Broadway and was determined to go.  It's also wonderful because it's very kid-friendly and I knew Leah would get a charge out of it because she finds slapstick type humor hilarious.  The idea of the show is that a local theater company is putting on a production of a murder mystery play, and absolutely everything that can go wrong does go wrong in the ensuing 90 minutes.  Set failures, script failures, prop failures, acting failures, fire, unconsciousness, all kinds of mayhem.  It is a very physical play, as well, and so you know it must be absolutely exhausting for the actors to do the show.  They did not disappoint.  It was every bit as good as I remembered, and perhaps even more.  About mid-way through, the director comes out and says "We're doing our best, stop laughing at us!"  Well, Leah absolutely dissolved into giggles, and the gentleman took notice and pointed to her and said, "You!  Little Girl!  Please stop laughing at us!"  She laughed even harder and he asked her again, "Stop laughing!" and then she got freaked out and hid under her blanket.  He said, "Don't hide under your blanket!  I can still see you, you know!  This isn't television!"  in a very crisp British accent.  Hilarious.  She refused to come out so he moved on, it was so funny.  (she did come out from under after the show resumed).  At the end, the cast got a well deserved standing ovation, and I would love to go see it again sometime!  It was really the highlight of my trip, honestly.  If you visit the website, they have a video clip and you'll see only a very minute part of the craziness. 

A quiet dinner 'al fresco' at Tom's

After the play was over, it was FINALLY time to go to the hotel and rest.  We were only a few blocks away from the hotel, thankfully, and walked down there without too much trouble.  We were all tucked in for naps by 5:00pm and agreed to rouse ourselves for dinner and another foray into the wild at about 7:00PM.  The alarms went off and even though we were tired, we did feel refreshed enough to go forage.  But getting back into Times Square and pushing and shoving our way through the crowds, we were all kind of short on patience, so I decided to leave the area for dinner.  I decided a great place to go would be Tom's Restaurant up on 112th and Broadway, so once we had gotten up to 50th, we hopped on an uptown train and were transported up there.  It was absolutely amazing how quiet and still it was in that neighborhood.  The Columbia students are largely gone for the summer, and there was none of the madness and crowds of midtown.  We had no trouble finding Tom's and I was thrilled to see they had added outdoor seating, as the inside is tiny and often crowded.  There really wasn't anyone there, so the Irish waitress seated us on the sidewalk and proceeded to talk our ears off for the next 90 minutes while we tucked into gyro, souvlaki, and a breakfast fry up.  The food was delicious, inexpensive, and it was just nice to be out of the hustle and bustle.

On the way back to the subway, we stopped off at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  It wasn't open at that hour, so we couldn't get in, but the girls got to see the outside of the largest Anglican cathedral in the world and the fourth largest Christian church in the world.  I wish I could have gotten them inside, as it's really a sight to see, but another time, perhaps!

Then it was back to Times Square so Astrid could see it lit up at night.  Leah was fading fast, so she and I sat in the Square and people-watched while Astrid took pictures and wandered in the area.  Then it was back to the hotel, where showers were taken, we all bedded down for the evening with various electronics and put on a 48 Hours mystery.  We were all asleep in no time.

The girls and '45'

I knew Leah was tired when she didn't wake up till 8AM the next morning.  That girl RARELY sleeps past 7AM!  By 9:30, she was ready for breakfast, so we headed downstairs to the free breakfast the hotel offered.  We got back to the room around 10:30 after eating waffles and harassing Astrid with a banana lost its "appeal"... (Astrid is rolling her eyes and letting me know I'm "not as funny as I think I am").  We had a family powwow about what to do with our day and decided we would skip the Brooklyn Bridge as we didn't think we had time and it was kind of out of the way.  I promised Leah I'd take her to see it another time.  (she is excited because this means she gets to come back to this Shangri-La!)  Thus, our plan was to walk to Rockefeller Center, head straight down Fifth Avenue, join whatever protest might be going on at Trump Tower, and then go to Central Park.  Once we were hungry for lunch, we'd take the subway up to 72nd Street, have some hot dogs, and then go to Strawberry Fields before crossing back to the East Side and going to visit the Hanff Building, which is on my NYC bucket list.

As we emerged onto Times Square yet again, we saw a chap impersonating the Idiot in Chief, so I

talked the girls into posing with him for pictures.  Best $2 I ever spent--absolutely hilarious.  The guy was amazing.  So funny and personable.  I loved the pictures we got.  We had no problems getting up to 50th Street, making a pit stop at M&M's World per Leah's request.  We cut down 50th and saw Radio City Music Hall and got to Rockefeller Center only to discover the ice rink area was full of tents for some big shindig, so you couldn't see the statue or anything!  SADNESS!!!  Also, the flags of all nations are down and replaced with flags of the 50 states.  But wait!  What's this?  There's a Lego Store here!  Joy!  In we went and spent quite some time looking over all the various sets and marveling about the displays.  In the Lego Rockefeller Center model, they had the flags of all nations and we were able to find the Danish flag as well.  Yahoo!  Astrid wandered around asking, "Do you like this stuff?  You're welcome", smiling smugly, and walking off.  We bought two Lego ice cube trays so we can have Lego shaped ice cubes.  We ducked into St. Patricks Cathedral so Astrid could see an American cathedral on the inside, but sadly there was a mass going on, being that it was Sunday morning and all, so we were stuck with viewing it from the back.  I lit a candle for Mike and Leah asked about the holy water and I taught the girls how to make the sign of the cross on themselves with holy water (old Catholic habits die hard!).

St. Patricks Cathedral, NYC

My fave Belgian treat! Hazelnut coronet

So we headed off to pay our 'respects' to 45.  Unfortunately, the street was blocked off.  I figured it was the infamous secret service security that maybe we were seeing, but no.  There was a pro-Israel parade going on for the day and no one was getting through.  We went around the back side of Trump Tower and did see the Secret Service (an added bonus of this was that we found a Neuhaus Chocolates store and each got a sweet treat), and then found one block where they were letting people through every 10 minutes, so we broke through there and made our way into Central Park.  We were accosted the entire way by people trying to sell us pedicab and carriage ride tours and some got quite aggressive.  One guy started following us down the block, despite my saying "No thank you" several times, and tried to hand me a flyer saying, "Just take the information, let me give you some information."  Leah got exasperated, looked the guy in the eye and with ice in her voice said, "We don't want your information, OK?" and stomped off.  I was DYING.  Such sass!

The girls in CP

There were a LOT of people in the park, but it was relatively peaceful and Leah was immediately drawn to climbing around on the rocks and running on the playground, despite being barely able to walk when we were out on the street (in her defense, walking from 44th to 59th is no mean feat for a kid her age--and her feet were probably feeling pretty mean.  Haha).  I took lots of pictures of the girls and then they did their thing for quite some time, long enough that Leah didn't take up whining about being hungry for a while.  When she did, we walked down to the Columbus Circle subway and rode up to 72nd street, emerging in front of Gray's Papaya.

Gray's has famously appeared in a number of movies, but the two that I recall are Fools Rush In and Die Hard 3.  All they sell are hot dogs and fancy fruit drinks, and they are good and cheap, so that's what we ordered.  Afterwards, we set down 72nd to see Strawberry Fields, but on the way we were sucked into a cosmetics shop, where Leah got a bright purple lipstick and Astrid got a "make your own palette" kit.  Eventually we emerged back into Central Park, and found the famous "Imagine" mosaic in honor of John Lennon, where someone had arranged beautiful flowers and berries.  Everyone was taking turns with their pictures, and eventually the girls got their turn in.  Even Dave got a turn being the llama of the hour and we joined in with a man who had out his guitar and was singing Beatles songs.

Llamas for Peace

When he left and we felt refreshed, our plan was to cut across the park in a straight line and go to the Hanff building at 305 E. 72nd.  The building is named for Helene Hanff, who wrote the book 84 Charing Cross.  When I was in London on the same trip I mentioned 3 years ago, I visited 84 Charing Cross, and I thought it would be neat to go see where in NY Helene lived and wrote from.  As we drew closer to the east side of the park, we could hear the parade was still going on.  And when we did finally emerge from the trees, we found ourselves on 66th Street, so we can't walk in a straight line for nothing.  Astrid really wanted to make sure I got to see my building, but Leah was really falling apart at this point, and I didn't blame her.  She was exhausted and her feet hurt and she wanted to rest so we stopped at several benches along the way back to 59th Street and hopped on the subway back to Times Square, as it had started to rain and we decided to go to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.  On the way, we got some coupons and then we stopped in at an Applebee's.  I ordered everyone drinks and mozzarella sticks--the cheapest things on the menu, and we had bathroom breaks and sat there, watching rugby and some kind of bike racing for an hour till we were somewhat restored.

Anne Hathaway took Dave under her wing

Afterwards, we walked down to the wax museum, and it was a really fun activity for us all!  We had a blast posing with the statues.  Hilarity erupted when Leah and I were sitting on a bench waiting for Astrid and someone thought I was one of the wax statues!!!!!!!!  She approached to take my picture, which I thought was weird, so I turned to look at her and she freaked out and ran away.  I was dying laughing.  So then I asked Leah did she think we could sucker in someone else, and we did the same thing--I just sat there, not blinking, not moving, and pretty soon two other girls approached.  So I moved my head and said "Hello" and they freaked out and ran away!!!  HILARIOUS!!!!!  I wonder who they thought I was???

So Astrid returned from powdering her nose and we enjoyed the rest of the museum--they had a 4D movie experience which was great, and it was just a fun way to get out of the rain for a while.

By now, it was 6:30 or so and the train was heading back to DC at 10PM, so we still had some time to kill.  Leah said "Mom, let's just go back to the train station" so we did, but as we emerged onto the street, I looked up at the Empire State Building and saw that it was not in the clouds, which I had feared given the dreary weather.  I asked the girls did they want to go to the top, which they did, very enthusiastically!  So that became our last tourist activity.  We got tickets to the 86th Floor Observatory, and had a wonderful time seeing the city from up there.  It was cool and quiet and peaceful, and the girls thought it was so cool as I pointed out all the places we'd been and how small everything looked from up top.  Seeing St. John the Divine as a speck in the distance, seeing Central Park spread out before us, Times Square's lights glowing, even the tiny SoL and Freedom Tower, it put into perspective the distances we had covered, the amount we had done and seen for the weekend.  Truly amazing.

Judging by her reaction, I think going up to the ESB was Astrid's favorite part of the trip! :-)  She remarked repeatedly it was 'lit'.

NY Pizza Dinner!

We came back down and across the street is a tried and true little pizza joint, so we went there for dinner and had NY pizza.  We got back to Penn Station at 9PM and the train left very promptly at 10:06.  We arrived back in DC at 1:30AM and were home before 3AM.  Leah was up and ready for school by 8:30 incredibly, although at the time of this writing it is 1:45 and I haven't seen hide nor hair of Astrid yet!

It was an incredible trip, jam packed with fun and memories and adventures.  I love NY so much, although I'm glad not to live there anymore, and almost can't wait to go visit again.  It was a wonderful trip for us to embark upon as a family as our time comes to a close, when every day literally seems to go by in a New York Minute.  Love these girls and our little family!

Not bad for a fluffy 40-something single mom, right? :)