A Visit to Penn Station

When we traveled to Manhattan from Vermont, we were supposed to arrive in Penn Station on Amtrak and the kids (mostly Lukey) were really looking forward to pulling into this station and riding the escalator up to the new main train hall.  Unfortunately, our Amtrak train was cancelled altogether due to flooding in Vermont so we had to drive down to Manhattan instead which meant that the kids missed out on their train ride on Amtrak as well as seeing Penn Station, especially the new train hall at Penn Station.

On our second day in Manhattan, we found that even the Manhattan subway system was trying to recover from flooding.  This caused some transportation issues for us.

We had a reservation for a visit at a specific time at the Museum of Natural History but we couldn't get there in time due to these subway problems.  On our way up to the museum, we only got as far as Columbus Circle (59th Street) but we had only minutes left to get to our reservation at the museum (81st Street).  No matter which option I played out in my head, I knew we would not get to the museum in time for our reservation.  

Extra walking was simply taking too long with Lukey on crutches.  We were already behind schedule due to our walks requiring more time than I had anticipated so adding more walking wasn't going to get us 20 or so blocks in just a few minutes.  We had to change our plans.

Since the kids missed out on pulling into Penn Station on Amtrak, I decided that perhaps we should hop on the '1' subway and head down to 7th and 33rd Street where we could enter Penn Station and show them around.  Looking at the status board on the subway platform, it looked like the 1 train was running fine south of Columbus Circle.  This meant we shouldn't have any problems getting down to 33rd Street so we traded a visit to the Museum of Natural History for a visit to Penn Station and the surrounding area.  

We had hoped that we would be able to find some time to visit Macy's on 34th Street anyway so heading down to this area would allow us a decent alternate option to our original plans.  Plus, the Empire State Building is in this area too and Lukey was excited to get up close to this iconic building.  This would allow us to do some shopping to keep Kenzie interested as well as squeeze in some site-seeing that would interest Lukey.

There has been a lot of construction happening at Penn Station.  Actually, there is a lot of construction happening all across Manhattan Island but Penn Station is still quite the mess.  

The new Moynihan Train Hall is completed just waiting for all the retail space to be leased but the front end of Penn Station is still being renovated.  Surprisingly, it was farther along in the renovation than I anticipated but it still has a long way to go.  The streets around Penn Station are horrendously crowded with construction equipment and pedestrian detours but things weren't so bad down in the station...  well, at least not in the areas where we visited.

In this photo, below, we are walking down the passageway from Penn Station at 7th Avenue to Moynihan Train Hall between 8th and 9th Avenues.  This is a new passageway...

And here is the new train hall that Amtrak now calls home...

There was a really cool sculpture mounted on the ceiling at one of the entrances to the Moynihan Train Hall...

We needed a bit of a break for a few minutes.  My spinal injuries were killing me and Lukey needed a break from using his crutches so we grabbed some drinks and snacks and sat down on the floor.  Unless you have tickets in hand, there are no areas with seating so we sat on the floor propped up against one of the large columns.  After some shopping, we would later stop into a pizzeria for a slice of pizza next to Macy's...

After spending some time exploring the new station, we went back to street level on 33rd Street so we could walk over to Macy's.  When you step out of the station, you get a view of the Empire State Building peeking from behind Madison Square Garden...

Although we missed the Museum of Natural History, at least we found something else to replace it.  I know the kids were happy to tour Penn Station and do some shopping!