Day 3 - New York

We started the day off by riding the train back into the city to go to St. Patrick’s cathedral for Mass. By the time we got to St. Patrick’s it was 12:00. So what was an early start, at first, turned out to be a mid-day start. It’s amazing how the time flies by when taking the train into town. The weather actually got somewhat worse with light to moderate rain. We ducked into Mass which was a wonderful experience. Of course, St. Patrick’s cathedral is one of the largest in the country. There were many people there, many of whom were tourists like us. Participating in the Mass with so many people from all walks of life emphasized how broad the Christian community really is and how wonderful a gift it is to all worship as one body.  Hunger soon set in after Mass.

Greg said there was a Qdoba in the first floor of the Empire State Building. Thankfully Lynn pointed out his mistake before we walked too far—Greg had mistaken the Chipotle for a Qdoba. Greg then called his sister who is his official New York directory assistance and told us there was one right around the corner from where we were standing. AWESOME!

After getting our fix of Qdoba, we began our walk to the Empire State Building. On the way, we stopped to see one of the greatest train stations in the country, Grand Central Station. Because it was the middle of a Sunday, the crowds were small, but it was still amazing to be standing in a beautiful, marble, train station with so much history. After the quick stop in the station, we continued our journey to the Empire State Building. It was foggy, but we were hoping it would clear up by the time we got there. By the time we got to the top, it was still foggy. We couldn’t see downtown at all, which was a shame and the Chrysler building which usually is a shiny building was dark and depressing. We lingered around at the top long enough for the clouds to begin to break and we were able to finally see downtown. The clouds were moving so much that as we walked around the observation deck, various buildings would come into view. The only place where the sun was shining was on the Hudson River so we knew that’s where we had to go next.

If you see any pictures with a cartoonish looking fella, that's Flat Stanley.  Flat Stanley is a boy in a book who was flattened by a bulletin board while asleep.  Since becoming flat, he can go to all kinds of places.  He can even mail himself.  So Katie's sister Claire mailed him to us to take pictures for her school project.  Below is Flat Stanley on the top of the Empire State Building next to a pigeon.  As you can see in the picture, the foggy weather didn't phase Flat Stanley; he was just happy to be there.

For free, there is a ferry that leaves downtown and goes to Staten Island. Both Greg and Lynn had never been on the ferry, but figured it would be nice to get some sights of downtown and the Statue of Liberty. It was a zoo getting onto it, and I can’t imagine doing that twice daily as a commute to the city, but the wait was definitely worth it. We passed right in front of the statue and were probably as close as you could get without taking a boat to actually go there. The weather was awesome, so we all just sat on the deck and enjoyed the ride to Staten Island and back to Manhattan.

Afterwards, we went to Ground Zero of the World Trade Center. From my visit four years ago, there seems to be more structure to it and not as much a gaping hole. There was a fire station nearby were firefighters were talking to people. We took a stroll down Wall Street trying to imagine the faces of people that would be bustling about the next day trying to deal with the economy. Hunger set in and we all had our eyes set on Lombardi’s, pizzeria extraordinaire. Their style of pizza is that of Naples: a thinner crust, simple with sauce and fresh mozzarella. We got two pizzas which were better than our favorite pizzeria back home. After a nice relaxed dinner, we took the subways back into Penn Station to catch the train back to Long Island.

During our day in New York, I wore a pedometer I had gotten from work a couple years back promoting excersise for the workforce.  I was using it to estimate our walking distance for the day.  The final step count was somewhere around 11,000.  Assuming 2.5 feet/step puts us walking over 8 miles.  That number seems high and I haven't figured out if that's even possible for the time we did spend walking, but if it's true, that's pretty impressive.

Unfortunately, our trip to New York had come to a close. It’s not often we get to visit our college friends so we relish any time we can get. It was an awesome trip. While the weather was rainy, it didn’t prevent us from doing anything we wanted to. Probably the only thing we didn’t do was to pack a picnic and throw a disc in Central Park. Greg and Lynn were wonderful in hosting us and showing us around New York.

Day2- New York

So UofL lost the game last night after too many people seemed to get injured. On top of that, Lynn was not able to join us in our trip to the city today because of a french horn gig she couldn't get out of.  Luckily we'll be graced with her presence tomorrow.

We took the 8:40 Long Island Rail Road train into the city which lasted about 1.5 hours.  I enjoyed a little nap and woke up at Penn Station where we were met by a foggy and damp New York day.  Greg, Katie and I went to a coffee shop to add a little pep to our step.  Below is us standing in Times Square.  Mmmmm...coffee!

The first stop was to go to a ticket office to get some Broadway tickets at half price.  After not selling them in advanced, they go on sale for half price the day of a show.  Standing in line for 45 minutes was fruitful as we got tickets to our top pick...Phantom of the Opera.  YES!

After getting the tickets, we walked around mid-town and saw one of the strangest sites.  People were wearing elaborate balloon creations and slowly bending at the hips and stretching their arms.  We turned and looked at a cop standing nearby as if to ask him what all this was about.  Without saying a word he just shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, indicating just how pleased he was with his post that morning...to be protecting a bunch of balloons.

Of course, going to New York begs a visit to Central Park.  It is always fun to watch people, especially in Central Park where all of the athletes of the city congregate to avoid crazy taxi drivers.  One my first impressions of New York is the diversity of the people.  They are old, young, and people of every ethnicity; contrasted to Cape Canaveral which is old and white.  In the middle of the park, there was some yoga convention.  If you look closely enough, you can see some people sticking their butts in the air.

The Phantom was fun to watch live.  Katie and I have watched the movie a gazillion times so expectations of the show were high.  I must say that the voices of the actors didn't compare to those in the movie.  There were, however, things different about it than the movie, including the owners of the theater being funnier characters.  One advantage of live performances is the audience interaction that movies do without.  For the first half of the show, we sat in the very last row of the first level.  They were decent seats, but we easliy saw why the tickets were half off...we could only see half of the stage.  The upper half was blocked by the ceiling of the balcony section above us so during some parts of the show, actors would walk up some stairs on stage and disappear while still performing.  During intermission, we checked the balcony above us and there was plenty of seating, which afforded a better view including the chandelier.

We visited the Nintendo store which featured a display showing the evolution of the Gameboy.  The first Gameboy I readily recognized was the original one with dimensions equal to a substantial novel.  Next we tried to find a technology store that housed a one-of-a-kind computer keyboard which sports keys that have dynamic displays.  So, for example, pressing caps-lock changes all of the keys to display capital letters.  I wanted go to the store to see if it was worth the $1600 price tag.  It wasn't.  It actually took a while to find the store.  Long story short, we wondered up and down the street, Katie patiently suggests "Why don't you ask the store cerk if he knows where it is."  and store clerk leads us right to it.  Classic.

Next, we went to the Apple store to grab a computer to look for a good place to eat around the area.  We found a nice pub close by, grabbed a beer and watch Michigan come back to beat Wisconsin.  After walking around all day, our feet hurt and all of us were tired.  Despite the pain, we're going back early tomorrow for some more fun!

Day1- Sound Beach, NY

Last night, I began to pack for our trip.  Of course Katie had been packing for a couple of days trying to make sure that she was prepared.  Many years of Boy Scout camping gave me the skills to pack on short notice.  Going on a weekend campout?  I'm ready in an hour.  Going on a 5-week vacation?  I'm ready in five hours.  We'll see whether my fast packing is the bane of an otherwise well prepared trip.

I must mention that it would have taken me longer to pack had Katie not been generous and ironed all of my wrinkled clothes (a result of me NEVER ironing my clothes) while I got all my things together.  I tried to find a good technique of packing the clothes to preserve all of Katie's hard work and settled for the bundle method.  The theory of the method sounds good, but only time will tell whether it actually works.  We ended up going to bed around 22:30.  All the excitement of the trip kept us awake for a while.  We kept thinking of things that we needed to pack.  Neither of us got good sleep.

Waking up, we spent some time finalizing the packing.  Our problem? Weight restrictions.  Southwest allows customers to check baggage for free up to 50lbs.  Using our bathroom scale, our largest piece of luggage was 60lbs.  After shifting some goods around, we got it close.  Big thanks to Chris, Mandy, and Blue (6 months) Comstock for taking us to the airport so we could leave our cars parked at home and not pay the $9/day fee.  Blue got restless halfway through so they parked and walked in with us.  He was really happy seeing all the activity.  After checking in the baggage, we found out that our largest luggage weighed in at 52.5 lbs so we got stuck with the $25 surcharge.  It will get more interesting when we fly with Olympic Airlines which restricts the baggage to 44 lbs.

As seen by the GPS track below, the 2.5 hour flight to Long Island went very well.  We actually arrived 20 minutes early, maybe due to catching some tailwinds.  Thankfully, Greg conveniently works about 5 minutes away from the airport, so as soon as we landed he was there to pick us up.  The Islip airport is small and clean, making it easy to get off the plane and out.

The weather up here is quite different from the weather in Florida.  For the past month Florida has been hot, but Fall finally arrived with cooler, sunny weather.  New York was having the same kind of weather but recently was hit with a dreary spell.  Florida doesn't have dreary weather often, so while most would be miffed by it not being sunny, I'm grateful for the change.

We arrived at the Steeves homestead which is a small summer home on a hill (a geographic feature that Florida doesn't know).  The weather, topography, and wonderfully lush vegetation reminded us of our old Kentucky home.  The combination of elements brought back fond memories of campouts.  After dinner, we walked around Port Jeff while it drizzled a fine mist that almost appeared like snow (another phenomenon that Florida doesn't know).  Coming back to the house, we turned on the TV to watch our beloved Cardinals play against UCONN.  The game is still going on after many injuries with us losing by 5 points and 2.5 minutes to go.  Regardless of the result, tomorrow promises a fun day in the city that never sleeps.