New England Trip, Day 7--New York City, New York

Wednesday, April 25 we left Allen's and headed to New York City.

We wanted to stay in a good location, but we didn't want to pay a lot for it.  

So, the result was a YMCA.  

The exterior was pretty nice, but once we went inside and up to our room, we realized it was a bit more basic...and looked almost jail-like.  Haha!

Instead of queen beds, like we had been sleeping in at our usual hotel--Fairfield Inn--we got bunk beds!  With the added bonus of them being squeaky. :)  But at least the bedding was clean and we only needed to sleep there.  We arrived pretty late and got up early to maximize our day in NYC.

Thursday, April 26, we woke up early and walked a couple of blocks to the Manhattan New York Temple.  It's so cool that it's just right there in the middle of the city.  It has a church with it as well, to make the best use of the land.

Next we walked through a part of Central Park to get to the Empire State Building.

It was beautiful, even though all the trees hadn't quite bloomed and leafed yet.  It was also nice to have so much green space in such a concrete jungle.

Along our walk we also got to see Times Square.
I'm sure it's completely normal for New Yorkers to see camera crews set up and people ready to film.  It was fun for us to see it.  Oh!  And we saw some of the news anchors for Good Morning, America, but the security were kind of rushing people past so I didn't get a picture.

It's sort of hard to tell, but we saw the light ball that countdowns to the new year.

We continued our walk through the busy New York streets until we came to the Empire State Building!  We were glad we had bought a CityPass because we were able to bypass the ticket line to go to the top.  We still had a line, of course, to ride the elevators and to get a view from the top.  But thankfully they had some info about the building that we could read.  And of course, things to take pictures of: the entry and the elevator doors.

The lines were worth the wait for the awesome view on top!  And we had beautiful, clear skies so we could see a lot of the surrounding city.

The Chrysler Building

Flat-Iron Building

Central Park

The Hudson River

One World Trade Center

It was really cool to be up there to get that view of the city.  It is so huge!!

We then took an Uber out to Battery Park, seeing Brooklyn Bridge from the car.

While walking through the park we noticed a long, long line of people.  When we got closer to where the boats headed out to Ellis Island and The Statue of Liberty, we realized it was the ticket line.  We were so glad we had bought the CityPass, thinking it would at least let us bypass that line.  We then came to another long line of people.  This was to get your tickets scanned so you could then wait in another line to actually board the ferry.  Naturally, we got in this line, although we weren't happy about how long the wait would be.
Thankfully they had an employee going up and down the line, making sure people were in the right line.  He announced that that line was for those with printed tickets for the ferry.  When we asked about using the CityPass, he said that it wouldn't work--that we had to show our pass at the ticket counter to then get a printed ticket.  So...we actually had to go to that super long line!
That was NOT what we wanted to hear.  It would've taken hours, and we mean HOURS to wait in that first line, and then the second line and then the third line.  Since we only had the one day to spend, we decided it wasn't worth it to spend it in line after line.  So we left the line, went over to the water and took a picture of the Statue of Liberty at a distance.  Maybe one day we'll go out there...but today was not that day.

The nice thing about the CityPass that we bought there was we had the option of going to any 3 things from a long list.  Since we crossed off Ellis Island, we could then find something else to see and do.  We walked from Battery Park to the One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial.

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum was quite moving.  We spent a lot of time there reading and about that day and remembering all those who lost their lives.

The different memorials and tributes that were made were beautiful and touching.

They had an interactive exhibit where people could write messages--to those who died, to the family members, to those who helped, etc.  Glenn wrote this note.

From there we walked about 20 minutes to Pier 15.  Since we couldn't go out to Ellis Island and The Statue of Liberty, we decided to take a sightseeing cruise that went close to them.

We grabbed a hot dog and pretzel from the street vendor before boarding the boat.

This was definitely a good second choice to going out to those islands.  We got a great view of the New York skyline; we went close to Ellis Island and The Statue of Liberty; and we got to go up close and under the Brooklyn Bridge.

It was a great way to see things without having to walk around.  We had walked a lot--and had more to do--so it was nice to sit and enjoy the weather as well as sight see.

After the tour, we again took an Uber up to Grand Central Terminal.

And we saw a police officer on a horse!

We grabbed some pizza at Roberto's because we were quite hungry by this time.  And the walked to see a few last places before arriving at the parking garage where our rental car was parked.

We saw the Chrysler Building...

And St. Patrick's Cathedral...

And Rockefeller Center...

And we saw where The Tonight Show is filmed as well as Radio City Music Hall.

As you can tell, it was dark by this point and we had had a long, full day.  Even though we didn't do everything in NYC, we felt that we had seen a good portion and that we had done well to see what we could see.  
We got our car and headed out of the city through New Jersey.  Sometimes it's hard to get a good picture of the state signs, so we don't have one for New Jersey.  But we did pass through, and I guess technically we went to New Jersey while on the cruise ship...

We drove through New Jersey and part of Pennsylvania to Delaware where we spent the night.  We didn't have time to do anything there, so we figured that if we wanted to get to that state we would have to spend the night there.  So that's what we did!  We couldn't get that close to it without going there.  We've got to get all 50 states somehow! ;)

And just a couple of cute pictures of Sarah after a shower.  We just love this little girl and how well she handled touring all around, looking at things she won't remember. 
(Glenn was great as well, but I didn't get a pic of him...)  :S