New York City

 Back in January, my friend Nicole called me up and asked if I wanted to go on a girls trip. I of course said of course! I asked her where she wanted to go and she said she didn't care because she has never really gone on a girls trip. We both kind of were leaning to our safe place of Disneyland, but then she asked me what was on my bucket list. I took a day or two and I came up with that I had always wanted to see a show on broadway. I suggested to her New York City. I wasn't quite sure if she liked musicals or not and when she told me she loved musicals, we knew we had our place. Neither of us had ever been, but we went with a positive attitude and knew the places we wanted to try to go. We were on the go go go the entire time. It is definitely a city that you could visit over and over. We took a red eye flight Thursday the 20th of April and came home on Monday. We definitely could have used another day. We took lots and lots of pictures and walked lots and lots!

Here we go off on our adventure! 

We rode the LIRR subway system into Manhattan from JFK airport. It is an above ground subway. It was a great introduction into the big city life. Our hotel was right by the New York City Library building. It's one of the biggest library's in the nation. We didn't go inside, but we got a picture out front. We got into town about 8:00 in the morning so we hit the ground running. We dropped off our luggage at the hotel and off we went to start our adventure. 

We could not get over how BIG and TALL everything was. Like everything! You definitely feel small there. 

The learning curve of the subway system was a little tricky at first. We totally got the hang of it after a couple rides. We are grateful for our smart phones that it had a transit option on Maps so that we knew what line to jump on. 

We had reservations to go to the Statue of Liberty at 11:00. We had mapped out the city and knew what was by each other. We started off by going to ground zero. It was very first thing in the morning and so there were not a lot of people there, which was way nice. Wow what a humbling place. They have built a waterfall type thing in the places of the twin towers. The mood was so sobering. We then went into the 9-11 museum. That was even more sobering. So much pain and heart ache surrounding that day. We saw pictures and remnants of that day that I have never seen before. We had to kind of hurry through the museum because we needed to catch a fairy to the statue. 

You couldn't take pictures in certain areas of the museum. This is the front of a firetruck. 

We then walked to the Statue of Liberty. It was fun to all of a sudden spot her! 

This is the view of the city from the ferry we took. 

We were able to walk to the top of her pedestal. This was the view of her from there. There were over 400 steps to just get to the top of pedestal. I can't imagine to the top of the crown. 

We then took the ferry over to Ellis Island. I didn't think we would be there as long as we were, but it was such a fascinating place. So much history there with so many stories of people. 

The cathedrals were really neat. Trinity Church is this one. This is where Alexander Hamilton, his wife Eliza, and son are buried. 

We had to take pictures of the food we ate. We didn't have places in particular that we needed to go. But man everywhere we did go, we said we would eat there again. You could spend a weekend there just going to shows and eating food. Not even doing all the touristy things. 

Us on the subway! 

We took off on Saturday first thing and started exploring. We started off at Brooklyn Bridge. We once again went when there weren't a lot of people there yet. Such a cool bridge! 

We then walked to the Met. We found an original Van Gough. And then lots of art and other things from different eras. Very cool museum. 

We then were close to Central Park and we walked over/through it. It really is such a big park. We didn't even see all of it. 

Famous New York Pizza. It definitely was good! Our roommate from college used to live in Manhattan after college. She always raved about this bakery. So we went to the original bakery. It was good! 

I wanted to find a book store. There was one the west side where we were. It is cool to see how every bookstore sets up things differently. I definitely like our little one in Spanish Fork. 

The temple is right in the middle of skyscrapers and a busy street. It definitely did stand out though because the white exterior. 

Times Square! This is where the most people were and it was way crowded on the streets. 

We walked back to our hotel to grab our umbrellas and then headed out to get dinner and head to our first play. Dinner was great and the show was even better! I have seen Wicked before, but not with seats as great as we had. When we came out of the show it was raining pretty hard. 

Times Square at night reminds me a lot of Las Vegas. 

Sunday, we slept in and took our time. We were bushed from the day before. We walked over 24,000 steps. We walked everywhere we went on Saturday. 

I had heard that the Harry Potter store was amazing. It did not disappoint. I was geeking out all of over the place. It was so interactive and all the little details were amazing! Walked out with some fun things for me and the kids. 

The elevator was just like the chimney flume from the movies. 

The snake would hiss at you and speak the snake language. 

The lego store was right by the Harry Potter store. It's fun to see all the different lego creations. 

We went and found a really fun dessert place. The desserts were amazing! 

We had the matinee showing of MJ. I picked this play. It was like being in a concert. They played all of Michael Jackson's songs. The sets weren't as cool as Wicked's but the music was way good! 

We weren't quite sure how we wanted to spend the rest of the evening. I had been told that the top of Rockefeller is better than the top of the Empire State Building. We weren't sure if we wanted to do it because it was kind of expensive to just ride an elevator up. I am glad that Nicole pushed us into doing it. It was amazing to see the sun set at the top. Such beautiful views! 

In this picture you can see how big Central Park really is. 

These pictures were taken 30 minutes from each other. 

We thankfully didn't have a super early flight on Monday morning. We were able to take our time and then spend some time in Grand Central Station since that is where we needed to go to catch the LIRR again. It was huge and it had so much history inside there too! 

This is the LIRR train. 

NYC, you really are a place that everyone needs to visit. So much culture there. I definitely want to go back and take my family with me. I definitely will be seeing you soon!