A Nice Weekend in New York

Downtown Manhattan, One World Trade Center

This past weekend was the long Columbus Day weekend so we decided to head toward Long Island to see some family.  It had been a year and a half since we had seen any of my family. That last trip was for the funeral of one of my cousins which happened to be the same day the grandchildren were born.  This particular cousin was also a neighbor and school classmate so I knew I needed to make the trip down to Long Island for his funeral.

While I headed toward Long Island for that funeral a year and a half ago, Sheila headed to the hospital to meet Liza for the birth of the grandchildren. Afterward, Sheila and Adam hopped on a train and headed down to New York to meet me. Anyway, we hadn't seen any of the family since that very hectic week a year and a half ago.  

The Empire State Building

We headed south on Saturday for the long Columbus Day weekend while it seemed the rest of the northeast was heading north to check out the autumn foliage.  Needless to say, traffic was no issue for us which is always a relief but especially so on a holiday weekend.

When we arrived, my family met us at a local Irish Pub for some dinner, drinks and some billiards.  A few old friends stopped in to see us as well.  All in all, it was a nice night.  

Early Sunday morning we were up, out of the house and on a train headed into Manhattan. Unfortunately, we would soon find out that the holiday crowds were doing the same...

I will write more about our day in Manhattan soon.  There are definitely a lot of interesting stories to tell each of which could make a good sized blog entry!  I will say we packed an awful lot into one day.  When I have more time and energy, I will write more detailed stories and share some additional photos of the weekend.  In the meantime, here is a brief list of the things we did...  

"The Big Piano" made famous in the movie "Big"...
at FAO Schwartz...

We rode the train into Penn Station... walked to Times Square...  then walked to the west side, through the Hell's Kitchen area, to spend a few hours on a Circle Line Cruise around Manhattan Island and Liberty Island (Statue of Liberty)...  had lunch afterward...  walked toward the east side to find a subway line to bring us up toward midtown but ran into a Paraguay Day Parade up Fifth Avenue which blocked our way preventing us from crossing Fifth Avenue to get to the east side... we walked up Fifth Avenue, along the parade route, while watching the parade...  we managed to cross Fifth Avenue before Rockefeller Center but then had to divert around St Patrick's Cathedral due to construction... and, speaking of construction, I have never in my life seen so much construction in Manhattan at one time!  This caused countless diversions in our routes.  We walked up to Central Park to visit the famous FAO Schwartz toy store...   then tried to buy metro cards for the subway but no cards were left after the very busy day in Manhattan!  Between it being a long holiday weekend, a Paraguay Day parade, a Comic Convention, a Jet's football game, and who knows what else, the sheer volume of people in Manhattan was far greater than I had ever experienced in Manhattan, or anywhere!  

Sheila and Adam in Grand Central Station

By the time we managed to find a ticket machine that was still working, we ran into subway construction which complicated our planned route.  We eventually managed to get to the beautiful Grand Central Station and then managed to take the subway from there down to 33rd Street (via an unplanned stop downtown due to more construction) so we could walk to the Empire State Building and then to 34th Street to Macy's of the famous "Miracle on 34th Street" movie and Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Sheila did some shopping at Macy's and actually bought a few pairs of jeans and some blouses.  After visiting about six floors of the gigantic Macy's store, we walked the couple of blocks back to Penn Station to catch a train back to Long Island. 

People moving through Grand Central Station

When we arrived back in Rockville Centre, we had a late dinner and dessert with my siblings, nieces and nephew. We ordered some delicious pizza for dinner.  If we had access to this pizza all the time, I would probably weigh an additional hundred pounds!

I will write more about the specific sites we saw and the stories that go along with them in future blog entries.  

The following morning we had breakfast with my Dad and then headed north for home.  Again, all the traffic was headed in the opposite direction so driving was easy.  We had a late lunch at the Holyoke Mall in Massachusetts which did not agree with me and caused my health to crash. I was pretty sick, nauseated, legs not cooperating, and worn out for the second half of our trip home.  My emergency medications only wore me down even more.

We had a great time and we managed to see a lot of sites but my health is suffering now as a result of overdoing it.  I'm so exhausted and nauseated that trying to do anything is too much. Just the thought of stepping over the side of the tub to shower is enough to wear me down even more.  Hopefully I will have more energy tomorrow...   

In the meantime, I included a few photos here...  

Grand Central Station

Traffic zipping past Hotel Pennsylvania, across from Penn Station

Statue of Liberty