Grand Central is always so special to me. I don't know why. I just like it. In this case I was so happy to be off the subway that it looked like serenity to me. Jackson will probably roll his eyes at me, but that subway adventure stunk.
I loved looking up and being in the heart of the city, though. It really does seem to have a pulse. We got checked into our hotel and tried to recover from the subway chaos for a bit. Our hotel, The Intercontinental Barclays, was super fancy which is code for no free wifi. Bummer. I sent a message to a friend asking for the location of a photo he'd previously posted which showed an awesome view of NYC and it turned out he was in midtown at that moment, too.
We hopped down to an awesome soccer bar (I know, Kort, can that even be a real sentence?) called "Legends" and caught up with Kyle. I seriously hadn't seen him in over 7 YEARS and would like to thank Mark Zuckerberg for allowing us to keep in touch all of these years. It was really fun to catch up and meet all of his soccer-industry pals. He gave us some tips on how to get to the nice parts of Brooklyn for some killer views.
We braved the subway again and had much better luck when we weren't lugging around our baggage. We made it to Brooklyn without an issue and soon found dinner. There is a famous pizza joint called "Grimaldi's" where we intended to eat but it had a really long line. We had to pee and we were quite hungry. I looked on TripAdvisor (our third travel companion on all trips) and saw that the place next door, Juliana's, got better reviews. SOLD! We headed over.
THE PIZZA WAS A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!!!!!! I cannot even deal with how delicious this pie was. Honestly. Go. Now.
Funny story: a table's order was messed up resulting in an extra pizza. We'd already ordered and our pie was in the oven. The mom and two kids behind us had just been seated however and were presented with this mistake pizza. The kids weren't too pleased with the spicy sausage on that pie so Jackson "dealt" them a slice of our margarita pizza. He got sausage which is his favorite and the kids were happy. Winning. We carried on banter with them for the rest of our meal. Megan was the mom, Annabelle the daughter and we forget the son's name. They were 4 year old twins. I think Megan was happy to have adult conversation. We were happy to see that not all native New Yorkers are jerks. ;)
After dinner we went down to Brooklyn Bridge Park for some unbelievable views.
There's Lady Liberty in the distance.
The work continues on the new WTC building. The final spire goes up on Monday!
I've always wanted to walk to Brooklyn Bridge so after a few minutes of trying to figure out pedestrian access we were in business. Along with 10,000 other people. I'm not kidding. It was SO CROWDED.
Again, the views made dealing with all of the stroller-pushing people worth it.
Jackson was pretty excited to cross the bridge, too. He kept saying it was my thing but he loved it.
It was such a cool experience. I cannot recommend it enough. I would definitely take the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn and walk back because the views going towards Brooklyn aren't exciting.
This is my favorite building in the city. I want an apartment here. That should only run me about $5,000 a month for a studio. ;)
We'd never spent much time near the WTC site so we decided to see it this trip. We took a bunch of photos and then I wanted to see the waterfalls where the old buildings stood. As it turns out, those are behind fences and require tickets to get in. We didn't have tickets and you have to get them online quite far in advance. Unless you're us. In that case you walk up, ask to go in and get whisked to the front of the line and cut the people who've been waiting. It was a totally corrupt experience that I loved. ;) The tree pictured above was the lone surviving tree from the towers collapsing. The city nursed it back to health and now it blooms like nothing ever happened. Amazing.
The security to get into the memorial was like that at the airport which surprised me. I guess it makes sense. We sat and marveled at how tall the new tower was while listening to guides give accounts from that horrible day.
The waterfalls were quite touching. Just being able to feel the names of those who lost their lives was really powerful. I kept thinking how each of these names held a story, a history, most of all a family. It was heartbreaking. I will say that I'd wait to go to the memorial until they've finished the museum. It is kind of scarce right now and deserves so much more than it currently offers.
We've always wanted a photo with the famous bull statue but it is always so crowded that it seems impossible. At almost 8 on a Saturday night we tried again. It worked! First this Asian woman had to "ride" the bull and make the NYPD officers yell.
Then this guy tried to push the bull and Jackson was not impressed. HA!:)
Finally Jackson got to grab the bill by the horns!
Incredible. We got the bull without a single soul in the frame. Unheard of.
That's right folks. The blogger herself had her picture taken with the bull. It was a special night. ;)
This guy posed with the bull's balls.
I mocked him. Aww, nuts! (Haaaaaa!!!!)
We grabbed the subway again from the financial district and got around like old pros. It was still packed and we had to stand each time we rode.
I'm telling you though, arriving in Grand Central Station never gets old. If you can't tell, we had a really busy day. We walked more than 13 miles and were exhausted. We called it a night rather early to prepare for another big day of exploring on Sunday.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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