The Statue of Liberty continues in our Day 5 NYC adventure

We've arrived at Liberty Island!

 

We headed towards the Statue of Liberty to get our exclusive access to the pedestal and the Museum inside.  I have to say that we felt really special to be only a few people that get access there.  However, security is TIGHT.  We went through 3 different airport-like security systems by the time we were ready to climb inside.  I am proud to say that I climbed all 215 steps to the top of the pedestal.  Here was our view of the statue when we reached the top.

 

The climb to the top to get inside the crown was a total of 354 steps.  I don't think I could of made that climb (and those tickets are even more limited).  We still had an amazing view from the pedestal balcony.

Had to get a selfie from this amazing spot......and of course we used the new selfie stick!

 

I just love this guy!

 

 

This was one of those "practice selfie stick shots". 

I obviously was ready.....he was not!

But I still love him.

 

 

Dang it......I'm not ready yet Paul!

 

Oh yes......this one is so much better!

 

Inside the pedestal we also had access to a little museum which detailed the history of the statue along with lots of pictures and molds.  We had a "we'll take your picture if you'll take ours" moment when we got to take our picture standing at the nostrils of the Statue.

 

 

 

Once we climbed back down the pedestal.....I practiced taking my own selfie shots....

without the selfie stick

 

Other than the double chins......I think I did a great job with the angle on this shot!

Of course......there are always the bad shots that you get while practicing!

 

Will miss that awesome view from "almost the top" of the Statue of Liberty, however.....it was time for the short boat ride over to Ellis Island.  I was really looking forward to seeing this place.

 

Standing in the great hall of this historic building made you think about all the people who came to this country looking for a better life.  Some of them were probably our descendents. 

All the buildings on this island were restored after the facility closed in 1961 and were abandoned.  It was amazing to see the transformation.

A lot of the buildings had to be fixed up again after Hurricane Sandy hit there a few years ago.  It did some pretty major damage.  We watched a short movie on the history of the buildings, the island, and the people who came here.  It really was quite moving to see all of this and imagine what a great hardship and journey it was for the people that came here and what they sacrificed to get here.

 

This was one of the bunk rooms that they stayed in while they waited to be approved to move on and live their new life in the United States.

 

We hopped back on the boat to Manhattan around 6pm and jumped on the subway back to the hotel.  It was going to be our last night in New York City and we wanted to make sure we had a good time. 

Next blog......the exciting conclusion to our trip to NYC!

 

 

Our last full day in NYC......boo hoo it's Day 5

Before I start recreating the events of Day 5 in New York, I just have to say how lucky we were to get this LONG (it's long for us) vacation and get to spend all this time here.  The last day is always the saddest because you know that you have to go back home and face your real life.

But we weren't going to let the sadness of the last day get to us......we were going to go out and make it a GREAT one!

Lucky for us, we had made reservations before we came on this trip to get into some of the more popular places.  So after the morning stop to Starbucks, we headed to the 911 Museum.  We had a reservation time of 10:30.  A short subway ride got us to the museum and thanks to our reservation, we didn't have to stand in line and got right in.

One of the most somber and quiet places I've ever been.  The Museum is built on the site of one of the fallen buildings and many of the beams and concrete are part of the foundation of this Museum.

Walking around and seeing this stuff makes your hearts heavy and reminds you of that awful day.

Hopefully something like this will never happen again.

 

 

Seeing the personal effects, photos, and hearing the stories of the people that were there that day.....makes it more personal and connected to the terrible tragedy those families had to go through.

We took a couple of hours going through the Museum and by this time we were getting hungry.  We had a 3pm appointment to take the boat over to see the Statue of Liberty......so we hopped on the subway and went in search of someplace to eat.

Here's what we found:

Located in Greenwich Village (although we had no clue what area we were in)

Quiet, kinda darkish place that had lots of board games you could sit and play while you drink.  We, however, were only there for lunch.  We decided to share lunch, which we do quite often.  This way we get to try more things on the menu and don't get such big meals.  We shared spicy fried chicken served with Mac & Cheese (I am seriously on a mac & cheese kick right now) and a Cobb Salad.  While we ate, we plotted out the subway route map so that we could get back to the dock where the boat left from.  Good thing we had 1 week unlimited pass on the subway......because we really used them!

We got to the boat terminal in plenty of time and in fact, they let us get on early.  Here's the boats that take you across the river to Liberty Island.

We sat on the upper deck and the view was amazing.  The skyline.....the water.....Miss Statue of Liberty.....everything.  And once again we had another glorious day (a little cloudy) to enjoy our adventure.

The closer you got to this lovely lady.......the more pictures you wanted to take.  She stands there so regal and majestic out there.

What an awesome and incredible sight she is.

With advance reservations you can get tickets to go into the crown or into the pedestal.  I bought our tickets about 1 month before we left and got the last tickets for the pedestal on that day.  How awesome that was going to be......getting to climb into the pedestal.

But............this blog is already gone on for too long and I don't want to bore you with any more today......so I'll save our Statue of Liberty adventure for the next one!

How we finished off Day 4 in NYC

Back to our adventure.

We decided that we were going to spend the rest of the afternoon in Chinatown (we've been to Chinatowns in San Francisco, Washington D.C., London, might be another one that I can't recall at this moment).  It looked like one of the biggest Chinatown's we had ever seen and looked very interesting from the bus.  We had originally thought of going to the Brooklyn Chinatown....but decided that we wanted to be back in Manhattan.

And interesting it was.

The biggest annoyance was the old Chinese women on every street corner and in between constantly coming up to you and saying "Chanel?  Chanel?  Rolex? ".  It got irritating.  Our first mission once we got there was to find a place to eat lunch.  A nice, safe, clean place in the middle of Chinatown.  We "yelped" several close places and none of them seemed to be what we were looking for.  Just so happens that Chinatown is the neighborhood next to Little Italy.....so we chose Italian :-)

We found Forlini's......had good ratings and I can always spaghetti for lunch.  This place looked like a restaurant out of The Godfather.  The waiters working were all older men with wonderful thick Italian accents.

We feasted on an antipasto salad and some kind of pasta with Bolognese.  The bread was out of this world crazy delicious.  I could have just sat and ate bread all day.

Now that we had full bellies.....it was time to explore Chinatown.  Our mission was to get souvenirs for anybody that we felt like getting one for and I wanted a Brooklyn t-shirt.

Each and every street in this city is amazing and just so different from living here in Houston.  It's just a fascinating place to visit.

I just love being visiting here.  It's just so much hustle and bustle all the time.

Easy to spot which neighborhood is Chinatown and which is

Little Italy from the top and bottom picture

 

 

In our hunt for souvenirs......Paul bought a selfie-stick.  Seriously people.....we thought these things were really stupid, but when you travel with just 2 people......they are awesome to use.  You don't have to continually ask people to take a picture of us.  (*there's going to be a whole special blog written about selfie-sticks.....you're not going to want to miss that one)

 

Here he is trying it out:

 

 

While he was messing around with this.....I bought a NYC tote bag and a Brooklyn T-shirt....yay!

 

Some interesting things we found as we walked along:

 

 

Lots of street vendors selling things I never have seen before.

Look carefully at this picture, you'll see a tourist you might recognize in it.

(seriously, this guy just wanders off and leaves me doing my own thing)

 

Well it was about 5pm and we had big plans for the evening (one of the main reasons we

came to this city)......so we fought the crowded subways and headed back to the hotel

to shower up and change clothes.

 

We got to City Winery to see Eilen Jewell.  Our seats were awesome and we had nice people at our table to chat with. 

 

 

We decided to eat dinner later that evening because we had eaten a BIG late lunch. 

 

The concert was awesome and I really enjoyed her rockabilly/country music.  Paul had the highlight of his life when she signed his CD and he got to chat with her for a bit.

 

 

The venue was a place that made their own wine. 

 I snapped this picture when I was down in the basement using the restroom.

 

 

We snapped some pictures and had someone snap a picture of us out in front.  We were dressed so nicely -- and that doesn't happen very often.  I even had on a brand new dress (which I love), so I definitely had to record this occasion. 

(lighting not good......boo)

 

 

As we waited for the subway to take us back to our Times Square......

I had Paul snap a picture of me at the station we were at.

Our next mission was to find someplace to eat.

 

 

On our bus trip the day before, the lady who sat in front of us told us about the Stardust Diner where the waiters and waitresses sing.  Sounded like something cool and different.....so off we went to find this restaurant.

 

 

We had no idea it was going to take us so long to find the place (dumb GPS kept giving us different directions), so it was about 11:30pm when we went in to eat.  We ended up splitting a Patty Melt and some cole slaw.  Too late.....didn't want to eat a big meal at this time of the night.

 

 

I happened to have the lucky seat where the singing waitstaff would walk along the ledge behind me.  Gave me a good view.  The singing was amazing.  They have to audition to get their job and they are all actually aspuiring singers/dancers/actors who are looking for their big break on Broadway.  Was a fun place to eat at!

 

After eating......it was getting a bit late, so we jumped on the subway and headed back to our hotel.  Tomorrow would be our last full day here in the city and we already had reservations for a couple of things to do the next day.......it was going to be another long and busy one! 

 

Remembering Day 4 in New York City

Need to get the rest of this trip documented.  Still have the Santa Fe trip to get here too.  I just take too many darn pictures when we travel.  No......I LOVE to have the memories and look at them again.

Things are tough right now.  Paul is working about 100 hours a week.  We are short staffed.  Too many new staff.  People just quitting without notice.  All the great people quit to go to college.  Business is booming.  (*not ever going to complain about business booming).  This all means that I'm going to have to start working in the store on nights again.  *I was just beginning to feel like I was making a dent on my work and getting caught up......something always comes along to screw that up.

Well anyways.......our life was fun and glamouress during the summer.....now we're back to the reality of our slave driving job.  So to get me out of this funk......I'm going to remember Day 4 on our fabulous NYC vacation.

Day 4 began rainy and gloomy.  Darn it......well I guess you can't have great weather everyday.  The only problem with the bad weather today was that we were planning on going to Coney Island!

We grabbed some coffee for the husband and jumped on the subway.  It was going to take a little over an hour by subway to get there.

It was gray, cloudy, and we could see rain clouds in the distance......but we didn't care -- we were on vacation!

Here was our very first view of Coney Island from the subway window.  As you can see, it was a dark and gloomy day.

A view from a train :-)

 

Well at least with weather like this......there's not a lot of crowds!

Had to have a souvenir shot of the subway station at Coney Island!

 

The moment we pulled into the station, the skies opened up and started pouring.  By the time we had visited the restrooms and strolled out to the street......it stopped long enough for us to stroll around and get some pictures of this awesome place!

 

Well we had just missed the hot dog eating contest by a few days

While visiting Coney Island.....we discovered the smallest pizza shop ever.   His whole little shop, including wood fired oven, was that little cart.

There was a few die hard beach lovers enjoying this awesomely gray and cloudy day

We walked along the nice colorful Coney Island boardwalk.  No visit to the beach is complete without a stroll up and down the boardwalk.

Interesting name for a restaurant?!?!?!?!

Those of you who have seen the movie BIG will know exactly who this is!

 

We walked around a little and then made the executive decision to head back to Manhattan.  The weather wasn't exactly conducive to visiting the beach.  Just as we entered the subway station to head back.......it started pouring again.  (Thank you weather gods for allowing us to walk around here and enjoy a short visit to Coney Island).

 

As we rode the subway back to Manhattan......we were putting our brains together to think of what our next adventure was going to be.  We had no plans and it was only 1 in the afternoon.  What did we do?  Guess you'll just have to check back tomorrow (or the next day to see what we did).