Eastern Excursion 24: New York City part 1

NEW YORK CITY, part 1

Remember how I said we get lost all the time?? Yeah, that is the story of today. But that's okay, because our plan for today was to drive around New York City. There is so much to see and we figured that with the kids the best way to do it was to drive around everywhere. We drove for hours, up and down Manhattan ... and accidentally out of Manhattan ... in the morning when we got lost in New Jersey ... and in the afternoon when we got lost on in Brooklyn (which is on Long Island) ... and in the evening when we got lost in the Bronx. Yeah, we never really planned to leave Manhattan (except to go home to Sam's aunt and uncle's house in Scarsdale), but we managed to do it quite a few times. Ah, the adventures we have in the car! So here's what we did today:

We passed the USS Intrepid and the Trinity Church (if you don't know what they are, at least you've heard of them on National Treasure).

We drove through Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho, and Greenwich Village. Notes: Fifth Avenue is the 'old riche' area, Soho is the 'nouveau riche' area. Apparently you can't say "new rich." You have to say it in French. It makes them sound richer. And Greenwich is is pronounced Grenich. Don't make a fool of yourself. Like someone I know.

Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village

We crossed the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. And we accidentally went through the Holland tunnel (an $8 error, thanks to the toll) once and the Battery tunnel (a $5 error) twice.

Manhattan Bridge

Brooklyn Bridge - on it and from a distance

And of course we saw lots of 'New Yorkish' things like Broadway, taxis, sky rise window washers, and metal balcony/stair things attached to the outsides of apartments.


We ended our day taking a ferry from Battery Park past Ellis Island and on to the Statue of Liberty. The kids loved the ferry. Elijah chased around the gulls and sparrows the entire ride! The statue is really beautiful in person, much more so than in pictures. But it is also a lot smaller than either Samuel or I imagined.


New York City is definitely living up to its reputation so far. Tomorrow we will walk around Midtown Manhattan. I'll let you know how it goes!

Eastern Excursion 25: New York City part 2

NEW YORK CITY part 2

Today we started the day by going to The Cloisters, which is a branch of the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) that displays only art and architecture of the Middle Ages. They built the monastery using sections of five different medieval churches (disassembled in Europe and reassembled here) and then furnished it - doorways, columns, and all - completely with pieces from European churches that were being destroyed (or that had been destroyed during revolutions). This happens to be Sam's aunt's favorite site in New York City (and they have lived here for some thirty plus years). She absolutely insisted that we go, and I'm so glad we did. It was AMAZING! It was like visiting dozens of medieval churches all at once.

Windows made in the 1200s for monasteries in Germany, France, & England; Sepulcher of a Spanish Count from the early 1300s

After The Cloisters we skirted our way down to Midtown Manhattan. We walked down Broadway to Times Square and took pictures from both directions. If you look closely at the bottom picture on the left you can see the New Years ball and '2009' lit up.

We then made our way to the Empire State Building. You know I am terrified of heights, right? As in, we paid $40 to go to the top and as I watched the floor numbers change from 40 to 50 to 60 to 70 and finally to 80, I started hyperventilating. Just knowing that I was that high scared the daylights out of me. At the 80th floor you can just look out windows, to go outside you have to take another elevator up six more floors. Well, I paid $40 so I wasn't about to quit. But it took me much longer than most people to even step outside once we got to the 86th floor. And once I started out and got semi-close to the edge, people kept walking behind me and I'd jump thinking they were going to push me off. (Look at those bars - they couldn't have pushed me off if they wanted to. I'm just a psycho.) Yeah, why someone with such an intense fear of heights would pay $40 to scare themselves to death and practically wet their pants is beyond me. Oh wait.


Alright, alright, I'm a sap. I have to admit that one of the things that propelled me (besides being able to say I did it) was the whole I'm-a-girl-from-Baltimore-and-I'm-meeting-my-true-love-Sam-at-the-top-of-the-Empire-State-Building thing. You get bonus points if you can name that movie. :) Oh, and do you just love that Seara and Elijah are fighting in the picture I took of them? Yeah, that cracks me up. Very appropriate if we are trying to represent the truth.

After that we took a walk down 34th street and got hot dogs from a street vendor. I just had to do that. And Heidi - although they were good, your J-Dawgs are soooo much better. Gotta love that special sauce. Anyway, we actually ate the dogs inside Quiznos so we could sit and be warm. (Don't worry, we got drinks and chips from them so we weren't squatters.)


Just as the sun started setting we headed down 5th Avenue. Holy pedestrian traffic. There were so many people. I can hardly believe that there is that kind of traffic every day. The stores were hilarious (Sacs had these medieval-type fancy-shmancy slathered-with-jewels gowns on display that no one would ever wear) and the people were even better. You know on 101 Dalmations how Pongo looks out the window and sees different types of people? And one of them is a rich lady in high heels, fancy dress and furs, and her nose in the air? Okay, imagine that but in gold colors with more jewels and fur. Yeah, I saw her. For real. And it wasn't like someone poor trying to look rich. Nope, she was the real deal. I thought Disney was exaggerating. Apparently I was wrong.

We got to the Rockefeller Center just as dark hit so everything was lit up. St. Patrick's Cathedral across the street was beautiful, and of course it is fun to have a picture of Radio City Music Hall lit up. The ice skating rink looked so quaint and I wanted to go, but I had three major problems: 1) we were outnumbered, 2) I fall an average of 6 times a minute when I ice skate, and 3) there were over a hundred on-lookers and I wasn't about to make a fool of myself in front of all those people!

We ended the night at the Manhattan Temple. Sam's aunt and uncle met us there and took the kids to the chapel on the third floor while we went to do sealings. So here's how it works. You enter the building. If you go to your right, there is an elevator that services only floors 1-3. The third floor is the chapel. The nursery rooms was open and since they just remodeled, none of the cabinets had locks so the toys were fair game. The kids spent the whole time playing in there. The second floor is offices, I believe.

Okay, so once again, you enter the building. If you go to your left, there are doors that enter the temple. You pass the recommend desk and the baptistry (which they let us 'tour'), and go to the elevators. The fourth floor has all the laundry facilities and that is where you can rent your clothes (we wear all white once inside the temples to remind ourselves of cleanliness and purity). Then you go up to the 5th floor, where they have the dressing rooms and the endowment sessions. And the 6th floor is where all the sealing rooms are. The temple president himself did our sealings and he was wonderful! Afterwards he offered to let us go to the celestial room, and on the way we got to look into the endowment rooms. WOW. They were stunning. After a whole day walking around midtown Manhattan, you can't imagine what a relief it was to 'put off the world' so to speak, and relax in the House of the Lord. It was so rejuvenating.

I didn't take a pic of the temple, so I kyfed this one (legally) off line. It is taken at the same time of year and same time of day as we were there. To see more pictures of the interior, click HERE.

You wanna know what? Going to the temple was actually my very favorite part of the day. And my second favorite was actually sitting down, eating hotdogs with Sam and the kids. I guess the older I get (ha, ha, I'm a ripe old 26!) the more I realize what my priorities really are. I loved seeing more of New York City. It was fun to see the stores and the lifestyle, to visit famous sites and popular places. But the best parts of my day were the two things I can get almost anywhere: time with God and time with my family. Yup. I'm becoming a softie. And I love it.

Eastern Excursion 26: New York City part 3

Alright, alright. I know you're sick of these. But hey, for my own sake I have to record it. Don't read it if you don't want to. But if you do read it, you darn well better comment so that I know Sam isn't the only one who actually reads my posts. :)

NEW YORK CITY part 3

This is actually three days worth of stuff, but I'm combining it for one post. So on Sunday night Betsy took us on a drive through Westchester County (where they live) to see some of the sites there. We saw quite a few old chapels and unique homes, but my favorites were:

Hyde Park and the Vanderbilt Mansion. (I would love a lawn that huge! My own personal football field.)

The Old Dutch Church and Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow. (Yes, that Sleepy Hollow. We even saw the headless horseman bridge, but I didn't get a picture.) I love cemeteries. I mean love, love, love cemeteries. Especially old ones. They are so beautiful and peaceful. I love thinking about the people who are buried there - what kinds of lives they lived, what they might be doing now, and how excited they must be for the resurrection. I used to think this mild obsession of mine was a bit morbid. But Sam always tells people, "Janae loves cemeteries, just like President Monson." Boy, I love that man. Always putting my quirks in a good light.

The Castle on the Hudson. This 125 year-old house is now a hotel, and Betsy gave me my own private tour ... as we were walking through the various ballrooms, dining rooms, chapels, and gardens, I asked her, "Are we allowed to do this?" She shrugged and replied, "I act like I know what I'm doing and no one stops me." Ha, ha! It was beautiful. Rooms cost up to $1400 a night. Ouch!


On Monday Betsy took us to the Long Island Sound, then we decided to see the rest of New York (that we hadn't gotten lost in yet), namely Queens and Harlem. We didn't get out of the car. Need I say more?

At the Long Island Sound. Betsy is in black.

We intended to actually go inside the American Museum of Natural History (from Night at the Museum) and the Met, but we didn't have enough time. We'll have to do it on other trip. But we did pass the United Nations Headquarters and go through Central Park.

Museum of Natural History, UN Headquarters

Central Park, The Met

And, of course, I snapped some more 'classic NYC' pictures. First, those cover things that lead out of fancy buildings so that you can get into your taxi or chauffeured vehicle without getting wet. Second, NYPD. (Which is really hard to say without adding 'blue' at the end. Even though I've never even seen the show.) And last, but not least, graffiti. Classic big city, don't you think?

The next day, on our way home from New York, we crossed the outlet of the Susquehanna River. It was foggy, so the picture isn't great. But it's the Susquehanna, so who cares if the picture is great?? (The restoration of the priesthood, or authority to act in the name of God, happened in the early 1800's along the banks of the Susquehanna, so it is a special place to us Mormons.)