"Yes" To New York City

Today I'm talking all about our first day in New York City. We hadn't been to New York since January of 2019 and we were so excited to be back. We also made this a bit of a "yes" day and did some fun things we wouldn't normally do.

We took the train from Dave's cousin's apartment where we were staying into the city and arrived at Grand Central Station. Thus, our first stop was Zaro's, a bakery at Grand Central. We love their chocolate croissants and I got a cafe mocha.

 

I wanted to walk around and people watch but the kids wanted to go the library. So we went to the library. They had a really interesting exhibition on of some of the 56 million items the library has in its archives. I took this picture of one of Thomas Jefferson's handwritten copies of the US Constitution. They also had Malcolm X's briefcase, a handwritten letter by Martin Luther King, Jr, and the handwritten first page of the first draft of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. It was a very interesting exhibit.

 

I did ask if they did tours of the superintendent's apartment but the answer is, "no." Boo. (See my review of The Lions of Fifth Avenue here if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

 

After we left the library, we walked up Fifth Avenue towards Central Park. We enjoyed seeing the sights as we wandered. And we enjoyed street pretzels as a mid-morning snack.

 

The kids wanted to go into The Lego Store. We got to sit in a almost life size New York taxi, made of Lego, and got to see all sorts of fun and creative Lego creations. I really loved the tree.

Last time we were in New York, I decided that we needed to start going to museums. I figured the kids were old enough to both behave, and potentially enjoy one. So we started with MoMa (Museum of Modern Art.)

MoMA has everything from sculptures to weavings to paintings. I thought the weaving of the receipt from a Wal-Mart equivalent in Mexico was so interesting. Rachel wasn't sure how it was art!

Despite the fact that neither kid is looking at Warhol's soup cans, they did both spend a significant amount of time staring at that wall of paintings.

 

This was a large piece of paintbrushes in acrylic which I thought was so interesting. 

Rachel couldn't believe this was the "real" Starry Night. She kept thinking it was a copy.

Some of the paintings were huge...

 

...and some were just very abstract, like the piece on the left which was made up of four broken umbrellas, or the piece on the right which uses one square for each phone number in a phone book. I think the blue squares are odd numbers and the red squares are for even phone numbers.

After a few hours of looking at art we had a quick snack at the museum restaurant (a platter of delicious olives and a bowl of slightly spicy tomato soup which we all shared) and then headed outside for some fresh air.

We decided to splurge on a very short carriage tour of Central Park. I'd kind of wanted to do one of these for a few years, and Rachel really wanted to do it, so we agreed. It was cheesy but fun! Our horse was named, "Sparky" and Rachel enjoyed petting him.

 

Then we spent a bit more time in Central Park while the kids climbed on the rocks and Dave and I enjoyed the view! 

 

We had a reservation at Black Tap for supper. The kids and I ate salads and guacamole while Dave had a burger. The kids and I were saving room for one of their crazy shakes! Ours came with an ice cream sandwich and was perfect for sharing among the four of us!

 

After that we walked around more because we had some time to kill. We walked up to the Target at Columbus Circle so Dave could buy some deodorant and then we walked through Times Square, which was just as overwhelming as I remembered.

 

Finally, we were able to enter the theatre for our second ever Broadway musical. We went to see The Lion King. Sam and I loved it and Rachel was too tired to enjoy it. She whined through the first half, and fell asleep in the second half. We realized we had tried to pack in a little too much on this day, so her whining was justified, although annoying.

 

By the time the show ended, we walked back to Grand Central, caught the train to our station, and walked back to Dave's cousins' place, it was almost 1am and we were exhausted. Thankfully we could sleep in the next day.

 

So that was our reintroduction to New York City after a too long absence. It was the most fun day and we enjoyed it so much.