New York Day Four

Our fourth day in New York was another busy day.  We started off doing the Uptown Bus tour, which basically took us up and around Central Park.  There were a number of interesting things along the way, here are some pictures from the tour...

"No soup for you!"

This is the first and oldest train station in built uptown.

This is where John Lennon died.  Strawberry Fields is across
the road from it.

We made a last minute decision to get off and go into the Museum of Natural History.  Once John heard that there was a planetarium, then he wanted to go to it.  We were there about 10 minutes before it opened, so once it opened we got right in and had about an hour and a half before our show at the planetarium started.  Here's some pictures from along the way,

That's the statute of Roosevelt which was played
by Robin Williams in Night at the Museum.

In the lobby.

In the mammal exhibit, the African section.

To the left is the Hayden Sphere.  It was a large ball they used to help you understand the scales of things in the universe.  As you walk around it here were signs with examples of how large something would be when you compared it to the size of the sphere, for example if the Hayden Sphere was the size of the universe then our galaxy would be "this" big (they would have a ball in proportion to whatever size it would be).  It was really neat to get some perspective on the sizes of things.

All the planets compared to the "sun".

The dinosaur exhibit - my favourite!

Water animals exhibit.

After we saw our show in the planetarium, which was on how stars are formed, which was interesting, we hopped back on the bus to finish the tour.  We had originally planned to do the Bronx tour, but we ran out of time due to going to the museum.

Grant's tomb

The Bronx

Apollo Theatre

Harlem Market - there are different vendors who sell real
African clothing and food.  

This was some of the building in
Harlem.  Very cool.

The Guggenheim 

The Metropolitan Art Museum

The Central Park Reservoir

Once we finished our Uptown tour, we took the Subway over to Grand Central Station for a self-guided tour of the station.  We were given little things that look like transcribe machines and a map with numbers which you punch in and listen to the audio about that section/piece of the station.  We sat in the main concourse and listened to everything, then walked around to a couple spots which we had listened to but couldn't see from the main level.  It is such a beautiful building with an interesting history. If you are ever in New York, this is a must do!

List of famous trains that have stopped
at Grand Central.

After the Grand Central Station tour, we headed back to our hotel for a break and then went to Guy Fieri's restaurant, Guy's American.  John and I both got meals that he had created and it was easily the best meal we had there!

Afterwards, we headed back to our hotel for another short break and to plan out Wednesday, and then headed to Toy's R Us to pick up some candy from Candy Land and then headed to the Gershwin Theater to see Wicked!!  The tickets were my birthday present from John, as I really wanted to see a Broadway show while we were there.  I didn't know much about Wicked before we went, but it was a great show, even John liked!  The whole thing from the story and song to the set and costumes was just spectacular.  I won't give it all away, but we both really like what they did with the story and how they webbed it Dorothy and the real Wizard of Oz movie.  Definitely a must see show!

Waiting for the show to start!

After the show we headed to our hotel and to bed, it was the latest we had stayed out the whole time we were in NY!  

Stay tuned to our last full day in NY!

New York City Day Three

Day three in NYC was the beginning over three very packed day.  It began early again, as we had to go pick up our passes for the attractions and buses.  We wanted to get one of the first buses which left at 9am, we caught it at 9:10am, so we weren't too off our schedule.  We caught the downtown bus first which hit up major sights like the Empire State building, Madison Square Garden, the original Macy's, Wall Street, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, Battery Park etc.  Here are some pictures from along the way...

Madison Square Garden

Oldest Post Office in the US, it operates 24/7

Original Macy's

This building is called the Needle because of
how small it is.

This scaffolding was everywhere on buildings being worked on.
Probably takes a month just to get set up to work on it!

The new World Trade Center called One World Trade Center
also know as the Freedom Tower

Owl!

It is hard to see, but there are faces on the top going around.

There were gardens on top of a lot of the buildings,
sadly we did not get to see any of these gardens.

There is a city law that states that all buildings over
6 stories must have this wooden water tank on top of the building to help with water pressure.  They use wooden water tanks so that if the water freezes in the winter, then the wood will expand with the water.  You do not see many of the newer buildings with these as they have hidden them.

City Hall

We got off at the Battery Park stop, as we wanted to go over to Liberty Island first.  It was a little confusing at first to figure out where we had to pick up our tickets, but we figured it out after walking around a bit.  Once we got through the line, we were ushered off through security, which was basically like airport security and then ushered off to the boat where the employees kept telling people to move up the line to fit as many people in as possible, it was a little ridiculous....  John took some pictures while we were waiting in line and while we were on the ferry.

Ellis Island, it was still closed when we were there due to
the damage it suffered during Hurricane Sandy.  But it looks
like it opened back up this week...one week too late :(

There she is!

Those are all the people there at 11am!!!!

As we got closer to the island and we could see the statue, John decided that he would be like to go up to the pedestal part of the statue.  Unfortunately we didn't realize we needed to get the tickets for that on the Manhattan side or that the crown and pedestal tickets needed to be booked ahead of time so we weren't able to go up.  However, you do get to do a self guided audio tour, which they give you as soon as you get off the boat.  We did this while we walked around the statue, stopping here and there to take pictures or just sit and listen to the tour.

We spent around half an hour on the island, we finished off our tour at the gift shopping picking up a few souvenirs.  The line up for the boat bad was twice as bad as going to the island.  We almost had to wait for three ferries before we could get back, but thankfully God blessed us with being part of the last 10 people to get on board the second ferry, so we could move onto our next destination.

Once we got back to Manhattan, we headed over to the 9/11 memorial.  It is a really nice tribute to those who lost their lives.  They have made it a very tranquil spot (even despite all the construction taking place around it).  Where the twin towers originally stood, they have now made waterfalls with plaques going around them bearing the names of those who lost their lives.  There are some pictures of them below...

Freedom Tower

The rest of the 1 acre land that was the World Trade Center,
are these lovely gardens.  They must have been newly
planted as they were roped off with signs on them.  It will be
a nice spot once it is completed.

This is a map of where people's names
are who lost their lives from each tower,
the other flights and ems workers

After we left the memorial, we caught the Brooklyn bus tour, which took us around Brooklyn, with and option of hoping off at a few locations, although we opted out of that part.

Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge was the first suspension bridge in New York.  As such, our tour bus was not able to drive over it because it was not built for large vehicles such as a double decker bus.  An interesting story our tour guide told us was that when the bridge was first built, people were too afraid to travel over it as it was the first time they had ever seen anything like that and they did not trust the structure.  The only thing that would convince them that it was sturdy was when the circus came to town and the elephants walked across it, then the people thought that if the elephants could walk over and survive, so could they!

Manhattan Bridget - what we used to
get in and out of Brooklyn

Space is at such a premium - this is three
lanes of traffic above us, each of those
rails indicates a lane...needless to say
I was happy when we weren't near them
anymore! 

This is how close our bus is to the underside of the bridges
we passed under...

and the traffic lights!

New center built recently in Brooklyn

The inside has a round screen for advertisments

Brooklyn Library - the doors has characters from stories
built into them.

After we finished the Brooklyn tour, we hopped onto another Downtown bus and headed back up to Times Square.  We got off close to the Rockefeller Center and walked up to see it.  We had originally planned to go on a night bus tour, but it was so cold, which we weren't prepared for and we would have had to go over the Manhattan Bridge on the open double decker, so we opted out of that and decided on Rockefeller instead!  Here are our pictures along the way!

Need I say more?

Rockefeller Skating Rink!!! - I was rather disappointed
with it, as it is much smaller than I expected :(  

I was still happy to see people
skating on it, as I didn't think it
would be open yet!

We found a Lego World store in one of the Rockefeller buildings.  Here are some cool lego things that were around the store.

This dragon ran through the store in various spots coming through
the wall and ceiling.

A wall of every lego piece and colour you could think of!

This is made out of all lego people!

Lego Rockefeller Center!

After this stop, we found a place to eat and then headed back to our room for the evening.

That's it for day three...stay tuned for day four!