Pre-BEA: NYC Days 1 and 2
So my husband and I got to NYC late Friday night. We didn’t get much done that night except to take a cab to the apartment we’re renting and find some place to eat. I apologize for formatting on this post. I am doing this on my husband’s tablet and it just won’t let me do formatting without crashing his tablet….
Day 1
We decided to stop by the Empire State Building (we are staying a block away from it) and see if we could go up to the 86th floor. It wasn’t too busy so we went ahead and got tickets. Went up to the top and took some pics. It was pretty neat and nice and sunny so you could see really far. The whole thing took us about an hour to do.
Here we are standing on top of the empire state building.
View from the top of the empire state building
Then we got on a GreyLine bus tour of downtown and stayed on for the whole thing (about 3 hours worth). We went through times square (shown below) and Wall Street and every other part of downtown. It was incrediblly nice outside and made for a very nice tour.
Day 2
We started out Day 2 by going out to the Staten Island Ferry to get some views of the Statue of Liberty. It was an adventure because the line 1 Metro was down for the weekend. So we had to take a different way and then walk down Wall Street. We got on the Ferry with no problems and had planned to get off on Staten Island and hop right back on; but that was not meant to be. The 10:30am Ferry broke down and we were stuck with an absolutely huge mass of people waiting impatiently for the 11am ride.
Once we finally got back to the Manhatten area we hopped on another Grey Line bus to do their uptown tour. This was another very nice tour and showed us where all of the museums are and Central Park, etc. We had a great tour guide but it was windy and cold.
When this was done we went to the movies again to see Priest. Since my son is staying at home with my parents being able to go to adult movies (something rated higher than PG) is a big deal for us. Again the movie was mediocre, but kind of fun. Then we ate some dinner and hopped on the Metro to go to The Strand bookstore. The Strand isn’t the prettiest book store but it had a ton of books. I found the $1.99 ARC section and picked up some good ones; Shimmer by Alyson Noel and Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari. Trying to keep in mind that I will probably get more books at BEA.
Then back to the apartment to do what I am doing now!
Tomorrow we expect to go to the Natural History Museum in the morning and then stop by the convention center in the afternoon to get our badges and check out the remainders pavilion.
Things that I’ve noticed about NYC:
– It’s very easy to get around; the Metro is easy to use and people are very helpful
– Lots of people smoke; which I barely ever see in MN
– Lots of people honk their horns, despite the signs aroudn that say there is a $350 fine for honking
– It’s not a very clean city. Paris and London were way cleaner.
– People aren’t as in a big of a hurry as they were when I visited London
– There are a billion places to eat.
There was also some excitement going on back in MN. We had some tonadoes tear through our area. I’ve been in contact with people back home and it looks like our house is fine and there wasn’t much damage to the boat or anything like that. So we are relieved to here that all is well; at least with people that we know.
More updates to come!