The Day We Walked Around New York City

Okay, okay, really our second day in the city was spent walking around (a piece of) Lower Manhattan but we still did do a lot of walking! Also I can't believe it's already been three weeks since we spent our second day in New York City. I also can't believe it's taken me three weeks to write this post :) I really meant to have it done a week ago, if not earlier. Anyways, I'm finally blogging the end of our March Break trip. You can read other posts here and here.

After a very long day on Friday, we slept in on Saturday and then met Tamar (from the blog, Random-osity, which you can find here) for lunch!!!! I was so excited to meet another blog friend in person and we had a great time visiting with Tamar!!!

Then we went to Dave's cousin's house and hung out with their family. On Saturday evening, Dave's cousins were going out, and Dave's aunt and uncle were babysitting their grand kids. They encouraged Dave and I to go on a date so Sam and Rachel hung out with their second cousins while Dave and I went and ate some really good wood-fired pizza!

Second cousins on a stuffed dog, 2022 and 2019

Sunday we just enjoyed visiting with family all day, eating good food, and watching the kids play! And re-creating pictures of years past :)

On Monday, we headed back into the city. We had heard about the Harry Potter store, and seen people carrying bags from there, but we didn't know if we'd get in. Supposedly, there is a daily QR code you can scan, starting at 8am, and once the store is full for the day, the QR code is gone and no one else can get in. We didn't get to the store until 11:30 and were shocked that we could just walk right in. I guess a non-holiday Monday is the day to visit.

We shared two mugs of Butterbeer, enjoyed the props, and bought a few things :) It was super fun to visit.

Since Monday was also Pi Day, we decided to enjoy some pizza pie. My pizza had a vodka sauce which was super creamy and delicious!

Then we walked over to Little Island. We'd heard about this from a few people and it sounded really interesting. It's basically an artificial island park in the middle of the Hudson River. It was really interesting to walk around it.

Rachel enjoyed practicing her dance leaps!

Our family at the very start of the High Line.

I love The High Line. It's a walking path near an old subway track. We've walked it a couple of times in the fall but never in the spring. It was so pretty, even though a bit of it was under construction, and some of the play areas which Rachel remembered weren't in existence any longer.

Signs of spring!

We saw someone doing pull ups at this spot so Rachel and Dave gave it a try after he'd left.

There are some really interesting pieces of art along The High Line.

One thing which was so great was that Rachel and Sam could run ahead, or lag behind, or sit and take a break, and I wasn't too worried about them. Here, they were watching the traffic as this viewing platform is built over the street.

This is a really unique structure called The Vessel. The original idea was that people could walk up all the staircases for great views but I guess it's closed because some people decided to commit suicide from it. Now it's just a huge structure to look at.

After The High Line, we walked over to Citrovia, which is another really fun art installation. We enjoyed taking some pictures there.

After Citrovia, we took the subway back to Grand Central Station, took the train back to our car, and navigated to where we had to get our rapid tests, which we needed to return home. Then we headed out on our way home.

We enjoyed a stop at Panera Bread for supper, a night in a hotel, another Target trip (yes, our third in five days -- haha!), and got home the next afternoon. We were so happy to have had such a great trip visiting family and seeing so many fun things in New York City!