New York City

New York City has been on my bucket list for a while now.  It's not on Keith's list of places to visit, so when Kristin asked if I wanted to go with her, I knew it was the perfect opportunity.  Kristin lived there for years so she knows the city really well.  She found a great price on plane tickets and a hotel, Keith encouraged me to do it, we both knew this was the perfect opportunity.  We took a red eye flight on Thursday night.  I was able to sleep for a couple hours on the plane. 

We took the air taxi to the train and then took the train into the city.  This was my first glimpse of New York City.  That round building is the Knicks arena, our hotel was pretty close to that. I always got excited when I saw the arena when we were walking home because I knew we were close and we were always exhausted from a long day of sight seeing and tons of walking!

We got to our hotel a little after 8 AM.  They let us check in right then, which was fabulous because we were both exhausted.  We grabbed breakfast at the hotel and then took a nap for a couple of hours.  When we woke up we walked over to Times Square.  We stopped for a quick lunch and then walked around Times Square and looked in some of the shops.

After that we kept walking and went over to Central Park.  It was cold!  I didn't pack a big coat because I had to wear my coat on the plane because my suit case was full.  It was hard to know what to pack.  I forgot my gloves so I bought some and I also bought a zip up hoodie that was perfect under my coat.  I kept warm with all of that.

Central Park is huge.  We walked through some of it, but we didn't see a lot of it.

Winter is not the time to visit Central Park.  I'm sure it is beautiful in the Spring and Fall, but not so much in the winter.  It was still fun to see it and walk around though.

It's crazy to me that the park is so big because in every other part of New York City there is buildings everywhere.  I'm sure people who live there love Central Park.  It is a great place to escape the crowds and actually be able to see the sun because there aren't tall buildings everywhere blocking it.

After we walked around Central Park for a while we went over to the Museum of  Natural History. 

We were there for an hour before it closed.  We heard lots of night at the museum jokes from the security guards.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy the museum so much.  They had a lot of interesting things to look at.

The kids would have enjoyed this.  I sent them Marco Polo videos of a few of the displays.

They had a space exhibit that looked really cool, especially because it was surrounded by windows and it was dark outside.

I had to get a picture with Theodore Roosevelt.

The museum is on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and we needed to get back to midtown because we were seeing Hamilton that night, so I got my first ride on the subway.  It was standing room only.  It's a little awkward to be crammed in there because you don't really have any personal space. It wasn't that bad though, the rest of the weekend it wasn't as crowded.  It was cleaner than I was expecting.  I think everyone has just told me their horror stories, so I was expecting the worst.

We got off the subway in Times Square. 

There is so much to take in.  I wanted to take pictures of everything.  There are so many people walking in this area though, so you can't really stop and get a good picture.

We went to this restaurant for dinner.  We had just enough time to eat before we needed to get over to the show.  While Kristin was waiting for our table I walked across the street to Walgreens to grab something.  It felt like a big accomplishment to go on my own and find my way back to the restaurant without getting lost! 

After that we headed over to Broadway to see Hamilton.  I was torn on going to a show.  It seems like something you should do while you are in New York, but I didn't know if I would like it.  I am so glad we went!  I loved Hamilton.

We were on the very top row.  There were only two seats up there so we had plenty of room, I thought that was a great way to watch the show!

Caitlyn was so jealous when I told her I was going to Hamilton. She loves the music and really wants to see it.  She kept playing songs for me before I left and I read about it so I wouldn't be confused.  I  was blown away by how amazing the show was.  The actors were amazing, their voices were fabulous, the orchestra sounded amazing and the set was fantastic.  I absolutely loved every minute of it.

At the end of the play Alexander Hamilton is writing letters to Aaron Burr and he signs them A. Ham.  I was so tempted to buy this hat, but it was $30!  I ordered a shirt on Amazon instead.  People who don't know my maiden name won't get it, but I sure get a kick out of it.  After the show we walked back to our hotel.  It was 11 PM and the streets were still packed.  I never felt unsafe because you were always in a crowd.  There was a lot of police officers too.  We saw the police tackling a guy on our walk home.  The guy kept yelling out and the police were holding him on the ground. A bunch of people stopped and videoed it.  It's a miracle that we still have people willing to be police officers.

 Bless them and their families!