Over the weekend, Baby and I traveled (along with Baby's Nana and Uncle Ryan) to visit Baby's Papaw in Baltimore. We spent the afternoon visiting his job site - which, Uncle Ryan and I enjoyed driving the golf cart through the aisles of shelving. (Let it be known, I've been to several of Dad's job-sites...and, still - I'm not quite sure what he does! Probably because he speaks a different language when "talking construction".)
Thursday night, Dad took us to G&M Crabcakes for dinner...ah-maz-ingly, tasty food! There's one thing to note - this baby has been treated with some extra yummy dishes lately. Thursday night we all tanked out pretty early - knowing we had a 6:58am train to catch Friday morning.
Speaking of that 6:58am train - it didn't quite live up to my vision of the Polar Express, but it was extremely comfortable. The four of us were split up at first - realizing everyone catches one of the first trains out of the city...but, about an hour into the 3-hour ride, we were all together. Ryan was briefing Dad on how to use Facebook and Mom and I were discussing plans for Baby's nursery.
While on the train - we started in Baltimore, stopped in Philadelphia and New Jersey - before our final stop in New York City! We arrived at Penn Station - walked out of the building and were right on 8th Avenue & 31st Street. My first thought was, "How unreal!" - the people, cars, buildings - walking to our hotel it definitely felt like we weren't in Kansas anymore, Toto...
We arrived at our hotel - left our bags and started walking towards our first stop - The Empire State Building.
Go figure - we, of all families, just happen to walk down THE road of Jack Demsey's restaurant. You know - THE place where you go to watch UK games on TV in New York City...how perfect was this?! Hanging outside the restaurant was a giant UK flag - just calling our names.
We opted to walk into The Empire State Building before eating lunch - and took advantage of these views:
It truly had the best views of the entire city! I loved how we went to this stop first - being able to see everything we were GOING to see up close. After touring the building - and buying Eric a souvenir - we were off for lunch with the rest of the Irish-speaking Wildcat fans.
After lunch, Mom and I headed to Mood's Fabric Store - the store from Bravo's Project Runway. Mom had hoped that we'd find the perfect fabric for Baby's bedding - but, really, it was rather a disappointment. I wanted more of a "print" - and they had a lot of the same patterns, just in different colors. At least we could say we walked through NYC's Fashion District - which was neat. We then decided to tackle our favorite store...
8-floors of heaven! :) The best part - they're fully decorated inside for Christmas - and have already started the display outside for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. As we were heading up to the bedding department - I "might" have glanced at the Jessica Simpson collection AREA...made the teeny-bopper inside of me squeal.
The boys were already back at the hotel when we finished at Macy's (which, make it known we bought not one thing...), so we headed back that way for a late-afternoon nap before dinner and Times Square.
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| Times Square - Day (before dinner) |
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| Times Square - Night (after dinner) |
I think we can all agree - the best parts of Times Square HAD to be the Toys R Us and Disney Store! :)
Saturday morning we actually got to sleep-in...8am, ya'll! We ate breakfast at the hotel, then put on our walking shoes headed to Pier 84 to catch our NY Water Taxi for our trip down the Hudson River, our hop-off at the 9/11 Memorial, and hop-on to see Wall Street (from the water), the Brooklyn Bridge and Lady Liberty.
My amazing Google Maps app on my phone was a life-saver all weekend - except when it told us that the distance between our hotel and Pier 84 was only a short 1.2 miles - 22 minute walk. This was nothing in our minds - and Ryan and I were making fun of how early we left the hotel...we were on "Mom Time". As painful as it is for me to say this...she was right. Thank the Good Lord we left early, because that 1.2 mile walk turned into close to a 3-4 mile walk! We finally arrived at the Pier and we were able to catch the earlier water taxi headed towards the first stop.
Walking down West Street towards the Memorial area was surreal. To look up and see the amount of buildings that surrounded the Twin Towers, and imagining what they saw on 9/11 seemed unimaginable. The new One World Trade Center is beautiful - lifting itself into the sky, showing what will be its strength at 1,776 feet high.
To say the 9/11 Memorial was the best part of NYC seems a bit off - knowing how devastating of an area it was on that September day. But, it was so overwhelming with emotions - to think what was standing there is no longer. It is a beautiful memorial - hands down, the best I've ever seen. The design and area of remembrance is graceful - giving you goosebumps as you see and read the 3,000 names. I lost complete control of my emotions reading "and her unborn child" - thinking about myself, the child I'm carrying and the family I have - what if that were me?
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| North Tower Memorial |
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| South Tower Memorial |
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| 9/11 Memorial Museum |
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| One World Trade Center |
We headed back to the Water Taxi - and continued our trip down the Hudson River. To think, we were floating right where Sully landed The Miracle on the Hudson was crazy - there's room, but not a lot - especially comparing the size of our boat to the size of an airplane. We cruised by Wall Street, stopped at the Brooklyn Bridge and finally stood and stared at The Statue of Liberty. I have to admit - I always envisioned Lady Liberty being much larger. Compared to the surrounding buildings and memorials - she's the size of a Barbie!
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| Wall Street |
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| Brooklyn Bridge |
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| Statue of Liberty |
After our water taxi ride was over - we hopped off and contemplated taking a taxi back to the hotel. Whatever walking-beast that was inside of us said "Heck, no!" - because we opted to two-step it back instead. After we arrived back at the hotel, I was officially over feeling like a ping-pong ball, walking through the streets. We took a rest, caught the first quarter of the UK football game on TV (which turned into a win!), gathered our belongings, headed for New York style pizza and back to Penn Station. Our train back to Baltimore arrived at 7:01pm - which felt more like 11:01pm from how exhausted we were.
We flew back home to Indy on Sunday afternoon - and saying good-bye to Dad was extremely hard for me. I hope he wasn't joking when he said he just might be coming home early!
I'm so happy we got this opportunity to take this trip as a family! We definitely missed Eric, when we kept saying "Eric would have..." or "Eric wouldn't have..." - but as our last trip pre-Baby, it was great!
To think - Baby was in a car, on a plane, train and boat...touched Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York - all over just one weekend! She's quite the world traveler already!
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