New York City!

My Dad took the ladies that work at his office to New York City to attend the Vision Expo East. Naturally he took my mother too but I lucked out and got to tag along! Needless to say, NYC was extremely foreign and a lot to take into my sheltered little mind. I feel like this picture gives a pretty good visual to my reaction to NYC and lasted the whole time we were there!

Okay I know that I am posting a lot of pictures and it is in hopes that they will tell the story better than I can. I do not have it in me to give a play-by-play accounting of the trip so you will have to be satisfied with random pictures with some commentary.
This is the Empire State Building:

At the top of this huge building you could see for miles. I have seen sky-scrapers before but most of the time there are several close together in the down town area of a city but the rest of the city is normal buildings.....well not NYC. There are ONLY sky-scrapers there! The view was pretty astounding! This is only a sliver of it:

And this of course is a lovely self-taken picture of my parents and I at our best (wink) while experiencing this amazing view:

In the midst of pure building we found a piece of beauty and tranquility, namely Central Park:

There were tons of carts that tourists could ride in to see the park. Many were horse-drawn but the ones in this picture are human-drawn (bicycles):

Unfortunately the leaves were not out on the trees yet but we were lucky enough to see some pretty cool blossoms:

Another day we rode a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. I must say that it looks a lot like all the pictures but it was still cool to see in real life. They were doing some construction at the base though so we couldn't go inside.

On the same day and right after Lady Liberty we took the ferry over to Ellis Island. We took a tour that explained the whole immigration process through Ellis Island. It was quite fascinating but kind of scary too. It was really cool to learn about though.

Our hotel was only one block away from Broadway and we were lucky enough to get to see the Broadway showing of Wicked. I have seen it before but it was just as good the second time...AMAZING!

The first few days we walked almost every where we went. After those looonngg walks riding the subway was even more cooler and more appreciated. It truly amazes me the crazy maze of subway stations under all those streets and buildings! And it is quite efficient! I thoroughly enjoyed riding them and felt like a subway pro by the end of the trip. My one complaint is the smelly condition of many of the subway stations. We rode in a few taxis and after surviving those near death experiences the subway looked even better!

We took the opportunity to just walk down Broadway one night. There were all kinds of stores and people everywhere. I saw several limos, some normal, some pink, and some were Ford Excursions! There were many street musicians playing all kinds of music.

We found a three-story M&M store with just about everything you could think of to buy. Dad was instantly drawn to Ms. Brown with her glasses and just had to get a picture!

This is all of us ladies standing in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was huge! We went to the Nature History Museum too but I liked this one better. I even recognized some of the pieces of art that I studied in my art history class :)

At first I was not very excited about going to see the 9/11 memorial but some of the other ladies were so we went. I am so glad that we did! It was very touching and good to remember and reflect on that day and the lives lost.

We are posing in front of what is known as the "survivor tree". It survived the 9/11 attacks, then was moved somewhere else only to be torn up in a wind storm. They brought it back to its original spot and it is amazingly still alive!

On Sunday we went to church in the Manhattan Temple. The temple is on the first two levels and the meeting house was on the third floor. It was SO nice to find something so familiar and peaceful in the midst of the foreign, chaotic city!

Here is one of the crazy limos we saw on Broadway. The streets are so narrow and busy, I do not know how this car turns corners!

This is an example of not only the pure sky-scrapers but also show the variety. None of the building are a like. It almost feels like it is a competition to come up with the coolest twist in the arcitecture of a sky-scraper.

Something that was very frustrating to me was the inability to see very far. I guess I have been spoiled with wide open spaces.....well they don't exist in NYC!

This was a random piece of art that we ran into on one of our walks. This one was pretty unique but random art work on the street was quite common.

This was another random thing we passed on that walk. People had formed a circle to watch these black guys break dancing on the street. This is how they make a living....crazy!

Well we experienced SO much more but I can't share it all. It was really cool to go and see all these things but it made me very homesick. I would take Eagar, Arizona any day over NYC!