I Heart NY!

So here they are, the photos you've all been waiting for.... We returned from our trip to New York on Monday night, and we had so much fun!

This photo was taken during our flight out of Salt Lake City. We flew right over the mountains! I've never seen them from above like this before.

An appropriate title photo for this post! Rob liked this, so he took a photo. It was on the side of an electrical box on a street light.

Here we are in Central Park in the area called Sheep Meadow. What I think is cool about Central Park is what you see in this photo is only a tiny portion of it. The rest is so wooded that when you're walking around, you can't even see or hear the city. It's like you've gone off into the mountains or something and you're far far away from Manhattan, but really, you're right in the middle of it! There are just a few places like this one where the buildings of the city peak through the tops of the trees.

Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.

Central Park is AMAZING! Especially right now because it is green and springtime. It was raining a little, so there weren't tons of people there which was nice.

Time Square. This is the first place we went. Our hotel was out near the airport, so we took a subway train into the city. We got up to the street and gazed at all the huge buildings with massive advertisements with big flashing lights. We were mesmerized! And also very disoriented!! We had no idea which way anything was, and had no desire to stare at our maps all day long to try and figure out how to get anywhere else, so we decided to do the open-air tour bus. It was a beautiful sunny day (which was nice since the forecast called for rain!) so the buses were perfect. AND you can hop off and hop on these buses, so we were able to get off at the stops that interested us, and then get back on another bus to take us to the next stop. The buses came around about every 10-15 minutes, so it was very convenient, and a great way to see the city. After we finished the downtown loop, we felt much more equipped to navigate the city on our own. The tour gave us a better feel for where everything was, and we hit up all the touristy spots as well!

View of the Empire State Building from below.

and the view from the top!

That's the Financial District behind us.

I like this photo because the camera focused on the bars and the city is out of focus. Kind of an artistic shot.

This is how close we were to the street lights while on our tour bus! If we stood up, it would have hit us on the head.

Grand Central Station.

One of my friends and her husband (Kaytee & John) live in Connecticut right now, and they were able to meet us in the city! We met them here at Grand Central Station. This building has really cool architecture which is somewhat captured in these photos.

America's first pizza parlor! Mr. Lombardi came over from Italy and opened his pizza place in New York. We had lunch there on Saturday.

Yes, it WAS as delicious as it looks!

We decided to take the Staten Island Ferry (which is free) to try and get a better view of the Statue of Liberty. This photo was taken on the ride back toward the city (which is behind us).

This is the closest shot we could get with one of us in the photo.

This is the closest shot we could get WITHOUT someone in the photo!

A fun shot of us riding the subway. We were pretty successful navigating the subway, except for one time on Sunday when we accidentally got on an express train, which means it doesn’t make all the stops. It passed right over the stop we wanted to get off on! So we jumped off at the next stop to get on a train going back the other direction. There was one there when we got off, so we hurried on got on it, but it kept going North, the same direction the other train we had just gotten off was going!! Long story short, we ended up in Harlem!! But we never got off the train. A local woman was kind enough to tell us that the next stop was the last stop, and the train would head back the other direction. So we just stayed on it until we finally got to the stop we were looking for in the first place!!

One of these is the Cash Cab, I just know it!

Another photo from Central Park. This was on the day when my friend and her husband came to see us, and he refused to let Rob hold our camera. He held onto it and kept taking pictures for us! It was very nice of him. It almost felt like we were getting engagement pictures or something because he was taking so many photos!

We had a GREAT trip to NYC! Some other highlights of the trip:

• Seeing Phantom of the Opera
• Rushing through the MET during the last half-hour before closing and then getting forced out by security!
• Meeting up with one of Rob's old college roommates (and still a best friend of ours) during our layover in Dallas.
• Rob getting his souvenir: a bootleg copy of Iron Man from Chinatown! (don't tell on us!)
• Finding the most perfect little pastry shop on Sunday night to get hot chocolate and dessert. It was just what we were looking for!

One of the funniest things that happened was on Sunday night on the subway as we rode back to our hotel. A black man in his 50's or 60's got on the train and immediately began to sing. He started singing about eating chicken, and going to KFC, and about how much he loves chicken because he is a “chicken head.” Then, after verse one, he decided to sing the song again in Spanish, then in Italian, then in Indian, then in Chinese, then in Japanese! By the time he got to Japanese, he was just singing words like “Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Toyota, Sushi.” … the funniest part came at the very end. When he was finished with the Japanese verse, he stopped and said, “So many languages…” – Then he walked around with a paper cup asking for money.

It was such a great trip! Thanks again Rob for being such a great husband and surprising me with such an awesome Anniversary gift!