But NYC is historic and vibrant and a nice "visit" place. I would never want to live there. To each their own, right? That said, there were a few things that surprised me.
The first was the Statue of Liberty. Wow. Beautiful, but much, much smaller than I expected.
The second was the cabbies. Seriously. Walk. You are giving your life into someone's hands when you ride in a cab. :)
Finally, the people really surprised me. One hears so much about the rudeness of New Yorkers, but we never encountered it. Everyone was kind and helpful. Not just the workers at places we visited, but people on the street. And you'd think they never see children, the way everyone made over Andrew. He was the star of the show everywhere we went! Although, in our week there I only saw a handful of children and no babies, so maybe they don't see many. In their defense, he was a super star and completely adorable!
I loved the peace I felt in the clouds. Wish I could spend all my time up there... Even looking over the city was nice!
We took a Big Bus tour of the city. It was the best way to see as much as possible in a short amount of time. We ended up only taking the Downtown Loop since we got off at a few stops and ran out of time before we could take the Uptown Loop, which means we missed seeing Central Park, the Rockefeller Center, the Guggenheim, and the MET. However, crammed a lot into a little time. Ellis Island was pretty amazing.
We loved going to the observation deck on the Empire State Building. Again, very peaceful.
The 9-11 Memorial was a touching, tasteful tribute to the fallen. I really like how they put the memorial pools in the place of the towers.
The new Freedom Tower. Much taller than the Empire State Building. We considered going in (and to the top), but ran out of time.
Times Square. Our first hotel was actually just outside of Times Square so any time we stepped out the door, we were pretty much here. There are a lot of places to eat that happen to either BE television shows or they got their big name by being on a show. Unfortunately, that distinction was lost on us. We were, however, enthralled with Hershey's World and M&Ms World. Woo-hoo!
We stayed on Long Island for the workshop and spent Monday traveling around the island. We went to Oyster Bay and saw Theodore Roosevelt's summer home, which was magnificent! We also had a good time at the beach, but it was incredibly cold and the water was like ice! They are gearing up for the Polar Plunge next week and I'm thinking they might be slightly crazy...
