New York in December

For my cousin Vanessa’s 18th birthday she wanted to go to New York City and see a few sites. Specifically, the Empire State Building (ESB), the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero. Last Friday we made the trip and saw each of these as well as Times Square and Chinatown. My photos are here and my Uncle Mike’s photos are here.

First stop. Grand Central station. Pee stop number 1.

Second stop. Empire State Building (ESB).

We spent about 3 hours total going to the ESB. About 1.5 hours waiting to get in, despite having already bought tickets, and the remaining 1.5 hours waiting for elevators and taking pictures at the top. Despite the weather and time of year the crowds were out. I took this one of the crowd in the ESB observatory.

Us on the 86th floor. Pee stop number 2.

ESB lobby.

 

After the ESB we made our way to Chinatown. I brought everybody to Mandarin Court for dim sum. We stuffed ourselves silly on excellent Chinese food. Pee stop number 3.

The line for the Statue of Liberty was much longer. It’s hard to tell, but the line goes from the far right all the way to the far left in this picture. This captures about half of the entire line just for tickets. It took over an hour to get ours and we were lucky. Shortly after we got ours they announced that they are out of tickets for the day. Phew.

A war memorial in Battery Park:

A Korean war memorial:

An interesting sculpture we saw while waiting in line.

Ellis island. We didn’t stop here. It was getting late and dark. We had only 45 minutes of time on Liberty island. I’ve been to Ellis island before though. Pee stop number 4 on the ferry to Liberty island.

The tall, green French lady.

 

Next stop. Ground Zero. This is part of the memorial wall.

 

Last stop before dinner. Times Square.

Finally, dinner at a nice, Irish restaurant a half-block away from all the hustle and bustle. Pee stop number 5.

We planned to go to Rockefeller center and maybe even a quick stop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but it was getting very late. Making our way back to the subway and to GC (pee stop number 6), we were just in time to get onto the express train home. We were back at mom’s house by 10pm.

Not bad for a full day of activity in the city. Vanessa got her wish to see the three main sites, grandma got her wish of seeing the Empire State Building and I successfully got everybody (6 people) all around Manhattan without losing anybody, getting lost or taking any wrong turns.