Scattered Thoughts . . .

A fter arriving at our hotel, the Hilton Midtown, we were anxious to go on our first site-seeing walk of this blustery cold Christmastime trip.   There would be plenty of walking over the next few days but I'm sure this first nighttime walk in midtown Manhattan was the most impressionable for Lukey and Kenzie.  This was a bit of a culture shock for them...  the skyscapers, the architecture, the lights, the hustle and bustle of crowds, the horns, the sirens, the trucks...  this was something different, for sure. We dropped off our bags, dressed warmly for the cold wind whipping off the ocean and through the canyons of tall building, and then headed back down to the lobby so we could make our way out the front doors of the hotel to Sixth Avenue.   Here is the very large, expansive lobby of the hotel... As you step out of the lobby onto Sixth Avenue, there is an old Checker Cab in front of the hotel.  Personally, I miss those unique giant cabs.  I'm not at all fond of all the new

A lmost all the hotels in mid-town Manhattan are a bit beyond our budget so we always stay in the area just south of the Empire State Building which happens to be Koreatown.  The prices seem to be the lowest in this area but, regardless of the budget prices, some of the hotels are quite nice.  For this next trip to Manhattan this coming Christmas with Lukey and Kenzie, we had already made reservations to stay at the Life Hotel on 31st Street just a block or two from the Empire State Building. The Life Hotel was just recently reopened and is actually quite nice.  This building used to be the headquarters for Life magazine but it more recently had been converted to a hotel.  We were really excited to be staying in a hotel that used to be the headquarters for Life magazine. Since I will be our tour guide and this is Lukey and Kenzie's first trip to Manhattan, I was familiarizing myself with Grand Central Terminal late last night in preparation of this upcoming Christmas visit to Manha

During our visit to Manhattan last week, we managed to squeeze in a visit with some of my family. They live only a short commuter train ride away from Manhattan and seeing some of Manhattan at Christmastime sounded good to them anyway so we all met at a restaurant in the Empire State Building on our last evening in Manhattan. Sheila's family has been growing in recent years so we've been busy with grandchildren and creating our own new family events and memories so there really has been little time for anything else. Health problems, medical appointments and hundreds of miles of distance don't help with this situation at all either. So, it has been quite a few years since we've seen any of my own family.  After Sheila put her radiation treatment behind her, there were a number of things that moved up in priority for her, as can be expected. Seeing Manhattan at Christmastime was one of those things and getting to see my family again was another. So, once Sheila