Manhattan Vacation

We had a fantastic time in New York City last week. You name it, we probably got to see it. It was awesome! Parker spent the week with his grandparents, while we went with my sister Julie, her husband Scott, my Aunt Suzie and my Grandma Cannon. We had such a wonderful time. We flew to JFK on Tuesday morning and started seeing the sights by that afternoon. We started out at the Empire State Buillding and saw the whole city from above.

Here are some pictures we took of the view!

That night we also stopped by Herald Square and the Flatiron Building.

We stayed in the Salisbury hotel, which was only a few blocks from Central Park, so it was a very convenient location and a great place to stay. Other than a shuttle ride to and from the airport, we walked and took the subway everywhere we needed to go. For the most part it's a very efficient way to get around. I can't imagine how they built it all, but I'm sure glad it's there.

On Wednesday we saw Carnegie Hall, the NY Museum of Modern Art, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, Bryant Park, the New York Public Library, UN headquarters, Grand Central Station, Times Square and took a Circle Line Tour of the Harbor Lights. It was a busy day, but fascinating!

Here is a fun painting from the NY MOMA. In case you can't see the caption, it says, "I don't care! I'd rather sink than call Brad for help!" We thought it fitting that Brad take a picture by it. My favorite paintings were probably the Monet works, but there was a lot of interesting art.

The tour of the U.N. was very interesting. Whenever I think of the U.N., I tend to think of the Security Council, but really they focus a lot more on humanitarian aid and peace keeping strategies.

It was fun to see the locations of many movie and television shoots. We recognized scenes from movies like "Enchanted", "The Day After Tomorrow", "Night at the Museum", National Treasure" and the show "Friends", among countless others. If anyone is planning a trip to New York any time soon, I would definitely recommend the Harbor Lights Tour we took. It was a two hour cruise around Manhattan Island and the Statue of Liberty. The guide told us lots of fascinating things about the sights and we had a great view from the ship. Here are a few pictures we took from the boat. In one you can see the twin beams of light to represent the twin towers. They shine them every year on 9/11. This was actually the night before, so they were just testing them for a few minutes.

On Thursday morning we started our day walking through Central Park. We saw the Bethesda Fountain, Belvedere Castle and Clepatra's Needle, which is an Egyptian Obelisk. We all loved being in Central Park. It's amazing how you can hardly tell you're in the middle of hundreds of skycrapers and a city that has a population of over 70,000 per square mile- and that statistic more than doubles during the day. Next we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met is gigantic. We were hurrying to see it all. I bet we walked for three miles or more just inside the museum and we still didn't see it all. After that we went across the park to the Natural History Museum. After all of the walking in the museums, we were glad to take a break. We went out to dinner at a fun restaurant with a singing wait staff.

Then we went to see the Broadway production of "Wicked". It was absolutely phenomenal!

Throughout our trip we went to some fantastic restaurants. One of our favorites was a little Italian Restaurant called Serafina. The ambiance was alright, but the food was absolutely incredible. I'm really inspired by my Aunt Suzie. She has incredible self control. Through only eating right and exercise she has lost 80 pounds and is surely going to keep at it. Despite the immense amount of walking during the days, she would get up early and go jogging. She had the discipline to order Raisin Bran when the rest of us were ordering things like this Waffling French Toast from Norma's. It was certainly delicious.

On Friday we went to Gound Zero and saw the site of the World Trade Center. We went to St. Paul's chapel, Trinity Church, Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, NY City Hall, the Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village, Washington Park, New York University, a fashion design studio, the Manhatten LDS Temple and Lincoln Center, including Juliard School of Music and the Metropolitan Opera House.

We saw a number of cathedrals on our vacation. Here are pictures of St. Patrick's and Trinity.

That night we went to a Yankee's Game. We lucked out to have perfect weather our whole trip, except that afternoon and evening. The game was rained out, which I guess is kind of rare. We still got to be inside the stadium before it's torn down.

On Saturday morning we did some souvenir shopping and then flew home in the afternoon and evening to Parker. We want to thank my Grandma Cannon for giving us an amazing experience in New York and for the chance we had to spend the week with her. We loved it!