These vagabond shoes....

Cabin fever never had it so good! We're back from our 3-day jaunt to New York City! We brought the girls and Julie, Hannah and Ben came with us. It was wonderful! The girls were so well behaved...we asked a lot of them with all that walking, but they were troopers and enjoyed themselves immensely, as did we! Below, Drew and Daddy at the start of our journey, on the train from Albany to NYC.



The train ride was 2.5 hours long and the girls played with each other and snacked. When we arrived, we dropped our luggage off at a storage facility and began walking uptown towards Times Square. On the agenda for the first day was a downtown bus tour. Below is a shot of the Empire State Building from just across the road.

There really is something for everyone in the city! Check out this interesting museum! We chose to pass on this one! Hee hee!

The famous Flatiron building seen in many movies.

Luci takes a snooze on the bus.

Flowers on the trees! I can't wait until we can see some of that here at home!

Some of the architecture on the buildings is so intricate and beautiful!

A stroll through Chinatown triggers de ja vu! These really are some of the things you'll see in China! Daddy and Drew pose in front of a store selling whole cooked ducks, heads and all!

Luci was brave enough to pose next to a live crab.

The sidewalk someplace downtown near City Hall.

We nixed actually going to the site of the World Trade Center disaster as we didn't think the girls would really be all that impressed with a big construction zone. They're also a bit young to really grasp the whole idea behind Ground Zero. When they're older, we'll check out the site, which will probably have a new building or two to replace the towers by then. Below, you can see a crane at the site.

The Peking, now a floating museum, docked at the South Street Seaport.

Funny some of the things you see in the city!

A Bhuddist temple in Chinatown.

Drew at the Rockefeller Center ice rink.

You didn't think we could go to NYC without hitting the American Girl Place, now did you???

Some dolls getting their hair done.

Hannah begs for a treat and promises to be good for the rest of her life!! Ha ha!

The wallet groaned a little, but the girls had a great time in this store! Four floors of nothing but American Girl stuff! They were in heaven!

These girls were dancing an Irish step dance on camera. The interviewer took one look at my hair and nabbed me for the next interview. Thankfully, it was only a morale boost film for CBS's sales marketing team, so it won't be aired!

We saw a few of these characters!

A few scenes from Times Square.

This was outside the Ripley's Believe it or Not musuem on 42nd Street.

At the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Outside our hotel.

There was an actual ferris wheel in the Toys R Us store!

The ball still marks 2009! They must leave it up all year??

The Ebony Hillbillies playing some music down in the subway. They were really good!

The girls danced to their music!

The girls' first ride on a subway! They really liked it!

Who goes to NY and doesn't get a hotdog from a street vendor???

We intended to take a ferry to the Statue of Liberty, climb up and look out....until we saw the lines! So instead, we took the Staten Island Ferry which drove by the statue. Here's Drew checking out the scene.

The statue. Kind of anticlimactic really...

And Luci on the boat.

Ben takes a snooze on the ferry.

And Luci and Dean napped, too!

The famous Nathan's Hotdog stand in Coney Island. We ate here and it was delicious!!

The girls get their very first glimpse of the ocean! The minute we stepped onto the beach, all I could smell was salty beach air...it was wonderful! Here's a long pier.

Surprisingly, the rides at Coney Island were running! I thought they didn't open until late April.

I actually got Luci to pose for this shot, she was obsessed with finding seashells, of which there were many.

At one of the entrances to Central Park, Artisan's Gate.

We chose to save the $34 it would have cost to take a horse drawn carriage ride through Central Park, but they posed with the horse anyway.

There was a husker in the park playing a bongo drum and other percussion instruments with a huge pile of hula hoops for anyone who wanted to hula. He was quite funny and the kids enjoyed themselves. Drew impressed all with her skills and the husker awarded her with a free hula hoop to take home! Drew shows Hannah how it's done.

Now she's just showing off! She had the biggest grin on her face because everyone was making such a fuss over her! She later claimed to be embarrassed, but we know better! She was loving every minute of it!

Luci gave it her best shot!

There were so many huge rocks in the park, the girls loved climbing on them!

The ice rink in the park...slowly melting.

Julie talked this guy down from $30 to $20 for this ride!

FAO Schwarz...we made it here at closing time, so we had to wait until the next day to go in!

Dean and the girls in front of the Trump Tower.

Ben with his big bad Shirley Temple at the Dallas BBQ which was awesome! Make sure you're hungry because the portions are humongous!

Hannah shows off her foot-long!

The next day, we went back to FAO Schwarz. Here the girls are mesmerized by the Barbie fashion show! The dolls were on a motorized track that brought them to the end of the catwalk and twirled them around like the models do in real life!

Dean snuggles three FAO Schwarz bears. One each for the girls and shhhhhh, one for Sara for her Easter basket tomorrow!

The girls pose with the soldier out front!

This fountain was in front of the store as well.

Below is a video taken of the girls playing on the floor piano in FAO Shcwarz, the same piano made famous in the movie, Big, with Tom Hanks!

And here is a short video of Luci at the hula hoop stop in Central Park.


Drew hula hooping!

This trip was so great! I wish we could have stayed longer...there are just so many things to do there! But, now we have an excuse to go back! I loved the diversity! It is my sincerest wish that my girls leave this armpit of a little town and see better places than this when they're done with school! I will miss them, yes, but I want them to experience a little more life than I did. The furthest I've lived is Rochester, while bigger than home, is not exactly the fast life! I want them to see different races, little people, drag queens, homosexuals, huskers, homeless people, etc! I want them to see that there's more to life than this small impoverished community and farms. I hope they don't get married until their thirties at least! I want them to travel and see the world before they settle down. To have so many resources at your beck and call would be a dream come true! To have a multitude of choices to tackle boredom...it boggles the mind! I felt all of this for the brief time we were there! Anyway, we all really enjoyed our short trip and hope to go back again in the future. Ahhhhhhh!