East Coast Trip - Day 2 (NYC)

Today's primary focus was getting to the Statue of Liberty. We had reserve tickets for 2pm and didn't plan anything before that, so we could take our time getting there. In fact, we slept in all the way to 10am and had bought some cereal and milk the night before to eat in our room. We rode the subway down to Ground Zero, walked around the giant construction site there a bit, then walked the rest of the way to Battery Park.

The kids were very excited to get to skip the longest line by having pre-paid tickets, but there was still lots of waiting and lines to go through. June was nervous about the ferry, which makes her grumpy and uncooperative (sound familiar, Oliver?). The weather was overcast and cool, so there weren't great views but at least it wasn't raining and it wasn't burning hot so it could have been worse. We thought we'd save time and money by eating lunch at a hot dog stand on the street. $55 later most people still didn't really like what they got so no winners there.

But they were quite impressed by Lady Liberty and had fun climbing all the stairs to get to the pedestal.

The whole thing went smoothly and took less time than we'd expected, although I wouldn't say it was exactly easy. Trying to do anything with this crew is a challenge, especially when it includes subways, lots of walking, two strollers, staying together, finding our way, and so many different eating and bathroom schedules.










We played around the grounds for a bit afterwards. Then boarded the ferry and headed back to the city.

Out came the ipods.

Given that Oliver's favorite food (almost only food) these days is pizza, and given that we were in the land of pizza, we decide to stop in Little Italy on the way back and try out the world-famous Lombardi's. It did not disappoint, and getting there around 5pm before the main dinner rush was a good move (plus Huck slept through dinner in the stroller so that made it quite pleasant).



After dinner we headed to Soho for a little shopping - well at least that idea sounded fun before we got there. Then we remembered we had 4 kids and 2 strollers with us so it wasn't that easy to browse. But we did track down this sweatshirt Oliver's had his eye on for a whole year, so he'd call it a great success.

After dinner and "shopping" we stopped by Stand near Union Square for one of their famous roasted marshmallow shakes - another great recommendation by Paul & Holly. We thought it would be nice to go sit in the park at Union Square and eat them before getting back on the subway (it was about 9pm at this point), but when the "kind gentlemen" next to us took Scott aside to "recommend" to him we leave, we quickly gathered our things and moved along.


We were again quite relieved to get back to our hotel and crash. This place is so perfect and now that we've done the two-bedroom suite thing I'm sure we've been spoiled for life. (Although unfortunately bedtime with 4 kids in one room did not go quite so smoothly tonight.)

We head to Boston tomorrow. Many more adventures lay ahead.