Day 22--New York City

What a day in New York City!  It was easily one of our favorite days on this trip so far.  We squeezed a lot into 14 hours and became masters of the NYC subway system.  

The day started with a subway ride from our hotel in Queens into Manhattan and the World Trade Center.  None of our kids were old enough to remember that day, but it still was powerful to see the Memorial.  And, the design of the new Tower is inspiring.  

I had no idea what the Memorial looked like and I was blown away.

We spent about an hour looking at the names, watching the waterfalls fall into a "bottomless" hole, and staring up at the new tower.  It makes you proud that they came up with such a great memorial and also found a way to rebuild a such an inspiring tower.

We walked over from World Trade to Wall Street and saw the New York Stock Exchange and happened to walk by a pretty cool company named after my beautiful wife....

From Wall Street it was back on the subway headed north for Central Park.  Appropriately, we found a Subway Sandwich shop and brought our sandwiches into the park and found some enormous  rocks to eat them on.

We LOVED Central Park.  We stayed in the park and explored for about 2 hours and felt like we only saw about 10% of the park.  There were playgrounds, ballfields, outdoor Chess, circus rides, open fields, forests, street performers, ponds, amphitheaters and a zoo.  We befriended a few different people on our strolls.  A couple from Albuquerque who recognized my Lobo shirt.  And, 2 retired gentlemen who were playing frisbee and could throw the frisbee at least 75 yards accurately.  We were having so much fun watching them throw that I challenged the boys to go over and ask them how they do it.  Brady had the most courage and went right over and started talking to them.  Pretty soon all 3 boys were getting frisbee lessons and we made a couple new friends.

Another part of our time in Central Park was a photography frenzy by Tiffany.  She made the kids pose for over 300 pictures. (I'm not exaggerating)  I'm sparing you, my friends reading this blog, from having to look at picture after picture of our kids.  But, be ready for a  Christmas card that has a lot more than 1 picture on it.  Here's a couple to build your anticipation for December.

After making it through a small portion of Central Park, we were exhausted.  And by we, I mean the adults. It called for a Gatorade break.

The kids had boundless energy, though, and while walking down 5th Avenue, Tiffany got a sudden burst of energy as well as we found the original Tiffany store, and she did some shopping.  She's always wanted to have something from Tiffany's and we found her a small charm to put on one of her necklaces.  Needless to say, it looks good on her!

The walking continued down 5th Avenue and into Times Square.

As we were eating dinner, we got to lay a surprise on the kids.  Just before we left from Albuquerque 3 weeks ago, some dear friends surprised Tiffany and I by telling us that they wanted to buy us tickets to a Broadway show--The Lion King.  We were blown away by their generosity and thrilled to be able to give our kids that kind of experience.  Needless to say, the kids were excited when we told them!

The show was amazing. The colors and costumes and music and dancing had the kids on the edge of their seats right from the beginning.  Can you tell from this picture if Macy liked the play?

The show ended at 11pm and we headed for the Subway.  Remember how I said we became masters of the Subway system?  Well, our kids were troopers as we waited and waited and waited  for our train to come.  Finally, Cade saw a piece of paper hanging on a pole saying that there were no trains to Queens that night at that station.  So, it was more walking at 11:30pm through underground New York to get to the right place to catch the Subway home.  We got back to the hotel after midnight.  Exhausted, worn out, and yet no whining or complaining because I think we all knew what an incredible day we had spent together.