Warning: Very long post ahead.
Disclaimer: I have the best husband ever. Do you want to know why? Because he surprised me with a trip to New York for my 30th birthday. Ya, he's pretty much that amazing.
Here's the back story. Tyler had originally planned for us to fly to San Diego, but he had to go to Canada for work right before our trip. So instead of flying to Canada and then fly back to SL then to Cali, he thought why not just make a small flight to New York. Remember about 3 years ago we got tickets to David Letterman and were about to go, but I was preggo and Tyler just had surgery? We decided not to go then and I was heartbroken; I honestly didn't think we would ever be able to go again. But because my husband is amazing, we went to NY and had the best vacation ever!
Because Tyler was already on the East coast, I had to fly to New York all by myself. I was nervous, but it worked out perfectly. Tyler and I got into NY about the same time (midnight NY time) and met up at baggage claim. You know all the things you hear about New York as far as traffic? They were all true. At 1 am it was still rush hour. Cars were flying past and honking at people. It was crazy! We finally made it to our hotel and went to bed at 2:30 am. We didn't want to miss anything in New York and knew sleep was the first thing to go, so we were up again at 5:30 to get ready. This is our picture at the airport hotel that we paid $100 to sleep in for 3 hours.
We heard The Band Perry was doing one of their summer concert series at NBC studios, so we decided to go there first. On the way we saw Uncle Kracker doing a concert at Fox studios. We stopped long enough to listen to part of a song and take a picture.
By the time we got to NBC studios, it was packed! We didn't have a very good view, but we got a few good pictures of the hosts.
This was the best picture we could get of The Band Perry... the back of Kimberly's head. It was just fun to be in the concert atmosphere in New York.
After the concert we went on a tour of NBC studios. It was so interesting and fun to see where they film the nightly news and Saturday Night Live. They didn't allow pictures on the tour, so you'll just have to use your imagination.
After the show we were off to sight see. Here's a bunch of pictures of our heads with famous things in the back ground.
Radio City Music Hall
Rockafeller Center
Umm... a famous church
A statue of Atlas
I wanted to look in the American Girl store and honestly I wanted to be little again so that I could get one of the dolls.
We bought tickets to a Wall Street Tour which was on the other side of the city. We decided our best option would be to take the subway. That was an experience in itself. It was so hot and crowed down there and people were not friendly! But it was so weird because it was like a complete city underneath the city. We finally figured out which route to take and we were off.
Our Wall street tour was really interesting. Did you know there used to be an actual wall on the street to block the Indians from entering? Hence the name, Wall Street. This is Tyler in front of the New York Stock Exchange (It's the one with the pillars). But did you know that people rarely sell stocks on the floor? The majority of trading is done online.
This is in front of the Federal Hall. This is where George Washington was inaugurated. This is also where "Occupy Wall Street" was held. There was one last crazy guy still protesting there and screaming at everyone about how evil the government is.
After our Wall Street tour we purchased our double decker bus pass and went on a tour of Manhattan.
We stopped in front of where they film the Late Show. I wish we could have got tickets, but they weren't filming. :(
That night we went to the Broadway show Cinderella. It was AMAZING!! Seriously, I was in love with it the entire time. If you ever have a chance to see this show, go!
We weren't supposed to take pictures, but we were sneaky and took one anyway.
After the show we walked around Times Square but we were both so tired going on 3 hours of sleep, so we went back to our hotel and crashed.
By the way, our hotel was amazing! We stayed right in Times Square at the Millenium Hotel. We had the best view of where the ball drops every New Years Eve.
The next day we were up bright and early to go to Liberty Island. We bought tickets before hand that let us go into the monument part of it, so we had to be there by 9 am. We had a slight detour because we got on the wrong bus and ended up having to take a cab, but we made it just in time. We got on the ferry headed to the island. Here's a lot of pictures of the New York Skyline from the ferry.
Behind Tyler is Ellis Island. because of Hurricane Sandy, Ellis Island is still closed so we weren't able to go there.
I think the Statue of Liberty was one of my favorite parts of our whole trip.
We went on a little tour inside of the monument. This is the actual original lantern that has since been replaced.
This is inside of the Statue of Liberty. Tyler was really interested in the engineering of it.
This is another picture of the New York Skyline and Ellis Island taken from inside the Statue of Liberty.
I really loved this part of the trip because you always see pictures of the Statue of Liberty, but it's completely different to see it in person.
Our next stop was to visit the Freedom Towers and the 9/11 Memorial. This was another one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was so sad and humbling to see where the twin towers were. Tyler and I talked about where we were when we found out about the terrorist attacks. We were both in our first semester of college. I remember my roommate coming in to wake me up and tell me that a plane just crashed through a building. I couldn't believe it; I spent all morning watching the news and felt so scared. I was away from home for the first time and I was just so scared at what would happen because of the terrorist attacks. Tyler said he was driving to work and was so mad because all the stations were talking, so he turned off the radio, still not knowing what was going on. It wasn't until he was in class and a classmate asked him if he heard the news. He went to the student center and watched everything from there.
The memorial was so cool. It has all the people's names who died all around the monument. It was very humbling too, because you could just imagine the fear everyone felt. Tyler and I kept talking about what would you do in that situation? Where would you go?
Now they are building the Freedom towers that are almost complete. The one is done and the other one is really close. When they are done they will be the tallest buildings in New York.
Then we went to look inside the museum. They had this piece of steel to show how mangled it was.
Tyler went to New York with his family in high school (before 9/11). He kept talking about how different things were. Even all our tour guides would make references to "before 9/11" and "post 9/11 world". It really was an huge event in history that changed so many things. Some of them are good (like additional security), but some things just aren't the same.
After that we were starving so we stopped at a local pizza place and had the biggest slice of pizza ever! New York pizza is the best!
We went on another tour, this time of Brooklyn, which included China Town and Little Italy. Here's some more famous things with our heads. I just don't think anyone gets how big all the buildings are until you are actually there. The buildings in Downtown Salt Lake don't even compare to the huge buildings in New York.
We stopped and some crazy guy came up to sell water and drinks. He asked if it was anyone's birthday and had us come up to the front and gave us a free drink. See, it pays to have a birthday!
On our tour they would tell us the price to live in some of the apartments. Some of them are millions of dollars for a small studio apartment. It makes you wonder what these people do for a living!
We stopped at the United Nations building.
Then we went back to Grand Central Station. We were there the day before when we went on the subway, but we didn't have time to take a picture. Grand Central Station is huge and so full of people!
Nobody in New York drives. and this proves why. This is what it costs to park for an hour! CRAZY!!!
And this is how they have to park the cars. Are you kidding me!?
One of our favorite things was to walk through a section called "Hell's Kitchen". It is on 9th avenue and it has all these way nice restaurants. It is more where the locals eat. We went here every night and just walked until we found a place we wanted to eat. This night we stopped at a French restaurant. We always watch the show "Hell's Kitchen" and they are always making scallops. They were on the menu and Tyler wanted to try them. When it came out there were only 3 scallops for his entire dinner. No sides, nothing. Wait till you hear how much it cost for his 3 scallops... $22! Good thing my steak and fries were huge so I could share with him.
Then we went on a night tour of New York.
Here's Times Square
And the Brooklyn Bridge
New York Skyline
Macy's. This store is HUGE!! It would take me all day to just go through it. And, this is where they do the Thanksgiving parade every year.
We wanted to go to the Empire State Building at night. That was pretty cool. We had to wait in line for a while, but once we got to the top, it was amazing.
The next day we went on another tour of the Bronx area.
On the way we saw the New York LDS Temple. It was cool because it seemed like it just came out of nowhere.
This is the Hudson River where Captin Sully had to land a plane in an emergency.
One of our favorite parts of this tour was to see the "projects" in Harlem. It was just unbelievable to see where the people live The buildings were so high and there were just so many of them.
See? All of those are apartments.
We stopped at Yankee Stadium and got to get out for a little break.
I had to take this picture for my brother, Darren, because he hates the Yankees.
On this tour we also saw the Apollo building.
Then we stopped at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We walked inside, but decided it wasn't worth paying to go through it. So we took a picture on the steps instead.
Next we went to Central Park and walked around. We stopped at Belvedere Castle. This is where the ending scene of "Smurfs" was filmed. Why is that important? Well Smurfs happens to be one of Makayla's favorite movies right now.
Since we were thinking of our Kay Bugs we had to call to see how our cute Kay bugs and Cader tot were doing at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Good news, they were having so much fun and they didn't even miss us!
One of the things I wanted to go to was Serendipity. Along the way to Serenditpity we saw Bloomingdales. I tell you, if I lived in New York I would spend all my time at the stores. They are huge!!
This place has been in a lot of movies, and Emily told me all about it, so we decided to go.
We got a Frrrozen Hot Chocolate... It was so good and everything I dreamed it would be!
On our walk back we found Trump Tower. This is where they film "The Apprentice". Donald Trump was too busy to meet us for a picture (obviously his loss!).
This pretty much sums up how I feel about New York.
We wanted to go to two shows that night, but I thought they started at 4 and they actually started at 3, so we missed the matinee. We got tickets for Chicago later that night and then decided to walk around Times Square again.
While waiting in line to get into Chicago we saw the theater where "The Book of Mormon" is playing. We were so tempted to go to this show, but we looked at a synopsis of it and I was offended just reading that. I knew we wouldn't enjoy the play. Plus the tickets were $250 each.
However, we loved Chicago! I'll admit it wasn't as good as Cinderella, but it was still incredibly good. I loved the music and dancing.
After the show we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant. We didn't understand a thing on the menu and did our best to order, but whatever we got was amazingly good. Then we walked back to our hotel and decided along the way to pretend like it was midnight on New Years Eve.
Along the way we found this statue.
The next morning we had to fly back to Salt Lake. We took a few more pictures of our amazing view from our hotel room and said good bye to New York.
After our $80 cab ride to the airport (and an awkward disagreement with the cab driver about the cost of the cab and how to pay) we finally arrived at JFK Airport and boarded for our 4 hour flight home.
Even though New York was the funnest (and most exhausting) trip I have ever been on, we were so excited to get home to our cute little kids. We missed them so much while we were gone.
Thank you Tyler for the best 30th birthday present. New York was the funnest trip I have ever been on and I can't wait to go back again (next time with the kids)!
