Christmas Time in The City

Laura:

Hello Loyal Blog-Followers! We're back in action today to bring you some new posts (Finally!!!... I know). First we've gotta wrap up one last Christmas-time adventure, and then I promise we will move on to more recent events. Cross my heart!!!

Ok...so...before we flew home to the STL for Christmas break, we spent a few days in NYC. THE CITY! Alex and I had never been to New York City, so we decided to spend most of our time walking around and seeing some touristy things. And by walking, I mean serious walking, everywhere we went! It was really fun but so exhausting that we would get back to our hotel by dinner time, pass out, and then wake up wondering whether we should attempt to find "dinner" in the middle of the night (No...we'll just go back to sleep). Next time we'll have to be more judicious with our energy usage!

Lorax in the Limo!!!

Our journey began by driving to NYC from Rochester in a rental car and then we planned to fly home to STL from NYC. Great plan! The drive down to the city was really pretty with rolling hills and woods. We dropped the car off at La Guardia Airport in NYC and then were driven to our hotel in a limo. Yes, a limo! We asked for a car to take us to our hotel and they said the only thing available was a limo, but that they would only charge us the town car price (which was more convenient & cheaper then getting a cab). So we took the limo! Such a classy way to start our trip to NYC. We stayed in a pretty nice hotel, The Affinia - Manhattan. It's at 7th Avenue & 31st, right across from Madison Square Garden, which was an excellent centralized location in Manhattan. Not too far uptown and not too far downtown. Just right!



First thing we did after dumping our bags in our hotel room was mosey up to Time Square. Despite the drizzle and chilly wind, it was still packed with people and all the billboards were shining bright.

The next day we started by getting breakfast and renting a wide-angle lens + camera to enhance our city photo-taking experience (it's hard to capture all the skyscrapers and city streets with a normal lens. Can't fit it all in the shot!). After successfully acquiring the lens & mega camera bag (see picture), we braved the subway and made our way downtown. The subway in NYC is actually very easy to navigate and pretty cheap, so if you go there I would highly recommend using it. [Alex: Although a little sketchy looking. Awful dark down there!]

Lorax in the Subway Tunnel

First item on our agenda while downtown was to take the Staten Island Ferry (fo free!) to get some pics of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and the island of Manhattan itself. The trip was pretty quick, the tickets were free, and we got some really neat pics. Did I mention it was free?!? How great! (Click on pics to make them bigger!)

Coming Back to Manhattan

Ellis Island

Once we made the round trip back to downtown Manhattan, we started to explore and make our way uptown on foot. We swung through Wall Street...

...China Town...

 ...and Little Italy!

We also walked past Ground Zero to see what progress had been made with the 9/11 Memorial. We didn't go inside because you have to order tickets at least a day in advance, but we did walk around the perimeter for a bit. There are a number of murals and sculptures around the Memorial and you can sneak peeks of the actual Memorial through certain places in the fence. I think we'll definitely have to go back sometime to pay proper respect to the men & women who died that day.

The next day we headed back downtown to see "The Bodies Exhibit". It was a really neat experience, especially since I had just completed 14 weeks of anatomical dissections for medical school. The exhibit has some really incredibly preserved specimens that help you visualize how everything fits together and how many layers of tissue and organs there really are in the human body. Something I never really appreciated until going through a cadaver dissection.

After "Bodies", we decided to walk around some more to more get shots of the city ( I won't bore you with random pics of buildings. Come to Rochester if you want to see them all!). We also stopped in Little Italy for lunch. Delizioso!

That evening we headed uptown beyond Time Square to visit The Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Plaza. It was awesome! The skating rink was smaller than expected, but the tree was humongous and beautiful! We spent a lot of time taking pictures.

Then we headed back to Time Square, took some more pictures. 

Foof on the High Line

 Our Final destination for the evening was "The High Line". It is an old, elevated train track that was built in the 1930's and has since been converted into a garden walking path. We went at night, and I thought it was really neat to be above the hustle and bustle of the city and a little closer to the sky scrapers. Taking a walk along the High Line definitely gives you a unique perspective of the city.







During our third and final evening in NYC, we went really uptown! All the way up to Central Park! We took a little time to meander through Central Park and strolled past the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By the time we got to the Metropolitan Museum of Art it was closing time, but Alex promised we could come back in the morning for a quick run through before our flight to STL left in the afternoon.





We woke up extra early so we could make it to the Met before our flight. We were probably there for a couple hours and really only had time to rush through the first floor of the museum. We'll definitely have to go back sometime and take a more leisurely and detailed tour. I love art and art history!

Alex: 

The food we ate during this trip was pretty tasty. We had Indian food at a swanky restaurant near Rockefeller Plaza with Coconut Mojito & Mango Cosmopolitan to drink. We ate "Halal Food" from a street vendor near our hotel. YUM! We also snagged a couple slices of authentic NY Style Pizza while out exploring the city. The food in Little Italy was good, but not as good as Bacco's back here in Rochester!

 

That pretty much covers our adventure to The Big City! We had a really good time and will have to go back again soon. Maybe when it's a little warmer and less rainy.