Galloping Grandparents

Well, we're home in one piece altho I could have used some tranquilizers!!!! I think next time we go to New York I'd like it to be spring instead of winter! This was definately an adventure!


Our hotel was somewhere on this street

There are some things we learned:
Don't drive a car to New York. Park it somewhere and take the train in.
It's against the law to honk your horn in NYC with a $300 fine but the police don't
stop anyone. Therefore, it's a great honking place, expecially the taxi drivers.
On one way streets, go ahead and stop anywhere you want even tho there are cars
parked on both sides of the street.
Don't bother to look at the pedestrian walk signs, just charge out any time you
want.
Get a map of the subways and learn the difference between uptown and downtown.
On one lane streets, if you're driving too slow the taxi driver will pull right
you and scare you to death.
All New Yorkers are in a hurry and will run you down if you don't keep pace with
them.
New Yorkers don't smile when they're in a hurry. They're hell bent on getting
where they're going.
New Yorkers will walk 3 abreast and too bad if you're going the other way. You
could get flattened on the wall.
Most of the women are so skinny because they walk/run everywhere and can run up
and down the subway stairs in record time.
Pedestrians shake their hands at you if you try to go when they are jaywalking.
There are WAAAAY too many people in New York.
If you do drive in New York and see a restaurant you want to try, forget it because
you won't find a place to park.
There are soooooo many policemen in New York. Very high security there.
Don't take a tour of New York in the snow with temps in the teens.
There are no escalators in the subways.
People take roller suitcases when they shop to put their purchases in as you can't
run your goodies out to the car because you have to take the subway.
Food is WAAY more expensive there so be careful when you make your own salad. We
paid $32.50 for two salads and a sprite!!
Crowds are still on the streets every nite at 11 pm. Many with strollers containing
babies!!
Many stores on Times Square are open 24 hours.
Crazy people stand in line in the freezing ice storm and snow for an hour to get last
minute cheap tickets to Broadway shows. (That would be us)
Many streets in New York are one way and never going the direction you want to go.
If you stay at La Quinta on Korea Way you will find crowds of Korean people and
only Korean BBQ and Gum Poo Bah places to eat.
You can hear garbage trucks picking up their goods at 3 am because that's the only
time they can get thru the streets.
Garbage trucks become snow plows in a storm and garbage pick up becomes secondary.
Deliveries to restaurants and stores are late at night also.
There are no easily accessable post offices and no one carries postcard stamps.
All the souvenir shops carry international stamps.
There are more skyscraper apartment buildings in New York than the rest of the world
combined, I believe.
I don't want to be anywhere near New York City during an earthquake!! Talk about a
disaster.....
We have to go back to make sure there really is a Statue Of Liberty because we never
could see it for the snow.
There are so many cool things to see in NYC.
There's as much construction in NYC as anywhere else in the nation.
Last year condos for the likes of Regis, Nicole Kidman, Yoko Ono, Steven Spielberg,
etc. sell for $5000 a square foot----that's a FOOT!!!

Sooooo, we drove to NY on Wednesday and got there in good time. Finding our hotel was a different story. After nearly having a nervous breakdown driving in the city and going around the block 4 times---we had the address but couldn't find it. Come to find out, the name of the hotel was on two small plaques on either side of the entrance with wreaths around them and we couldn't see the name!!! Obviously we got honked at numerous times for driving too slow and not running red lights. The parking was up the street in an underground place and we couldn't even drive the car in. They took our keys and we had to unload and walk back with all our stuff. Of course we had plastic bags full of stuff in addition to suitcases, computer bag,briefcase, etc. And it was cold, cold, cold. By the time we got everything to the 10th floor I was ready to call it a day. But we had to eat so we bundled up and went walking.


Empire State Building from Herald Square
It was fun to discover we were right on Herald Square ("remember me to Herald Square") and just down the street from Macy's of NYC, the biggest department store in the world. Believe me, it is!!! There were nine floors and about three buildings all connected. There were five floors of women's clothes alone!! Eating there was where we got stung for our salads!!! That was in the cellar!!! And the men's restroom was on the 7th floor :-). Needless to say, we were amazed!!



Thursday morn we tackled the subway to get DOWNTOWN to the employment center.It's in an old convent and was fascinating. You history buffs would love it if you like old places. The front of the building had been gutted and redone and it's quite funny. The chapel is on the 4th floors, the classrooms on the 3rd floor and the Relief Society room is on the 2nd floor!!! There are 2 branches and a ward that meet there. The employment office is on the main floor.

The employment center is the brownstone building.



Elder and Sister Kigin (from our old ward in Arlington, Va., Steve Wood, our fearless leader, and dad.

A scene from CSI--a true inner city basketball court between the employment center and the rest of the convent.
But touring the old part of the convent was super neat. It's five stories with the high ceilings. The nuns moved out in 2000 but missionaries used it until May of this year. The city condemned the building as unfit for living and they had to move in that very day. So all the rooms still have missionary stuff on the walls, pictures and just stuff they couldn't get out. One of the senior missionaries that lived there had a family reunion in the house and I guess it was a ball. There are several kitches in the building; originally it was a home of wealthy people. The front door and windows are still there from the early 1900's. All the nuns had their own rooms so each room has a sink and the bathrooms have multiple sinks, toilets and showers. 8 missionaries lived there at a time so they had a huge place to roam around in. The staircase is starting to lean and you get a vertigo feeling coming down the stairs. At one time it must have been a fabulous home!!

Convent staircase

Convent ceiling

In one of the rooms in convent where the missionaries lived.

This is the sanctuary in the convent. The church uses it for storage. The Catholic church doesn't want the windows--they are painted instead of stained glass.

This is the skylight in the middle of the convent.

Late Thursday afternoon we went to see the Manhattan Temple and it truly is just right in the middle of a very busy triangle of streets and tall buildings. On our tour the guide referred to it as a "new church".

Thursday night we saw "Lion King" and it was fabulous. The costumes were amazing as were the voices. It was basically a black cast so they had amazing voices. By the time we got home we were feeling like we really had the subway under control!! And our legs were out of control with all the steps up in the subway and all the walking to dodge those hurry-up New Yorkers. We are not exactly physical fitness examples so this was a REAL workout but we were successful.


This is a huge mask on the wall in the theater.
Here we are on Times Square






The biggest toy store in the world.


Before leaving Boston we had signed up for a 6 hr tour of New York on Friday. Figured that was the best way to see everything important in the city and then we could go back sometime and revisit the sights we wanted to spend more time investigating. Friday morn we got to the appointed place and promptly at 10 am as the tour bus departed it started to snow. And snow it did----all day long. It was quite the adventure. We took our warm coats, umbrella's, gloves, those toe warmers and cameras. Everyone was in an amazingly good mood considering the freezing rain and snow and everyone got off the bus at each stop. We did see everything except the Statue of Liberty. We voted not to take the ferry to Staten Island since we could barely even see the ferry much less the island. And we took lots of pictures. We did stop at Wall Street for a while and the history in that one block was amazing. But even more so was the stop at the World Financial Center overlooking ground zero. It's nothing but construction now and never having seen the twin towers it was hard to imagine how they looked. But off to the left of one picture is a very tall glass building. It is 1700+ feet high and the twin towers were twice that high so they were an easy target. Construction is underway for a memorial garden there and they are digging 75 feet down to anchor some buildings. A total of 10 buildings were brought down during and after the attack and only one is still standing. Off to the right in one picture you can see a short building between two taller buildings. It was partially demolished when it caught fire and two fire fighters from the same station as the first responders to the 911 attack were killed in that fire. Now demolishtion has stopped and there are lawsuits underway. It will eventually be the last building down. The World Financial Center was rebuilt exactly as it was before the attack. Many residents left the area after 911 saying it was unhealthy and there was an element of fear, but gradually over the years, residents have come back to live surrounding the sight and the buildings are being refurbished. It is amazing more people in the surrounding buildings weren't killed. Several times I just had the uncomfortable feeling that I didn't want to be in the city----an earthquake would be devastating!! And a resulting tidal wave would take all those tall buildings down. I think I watch too many of those doomsday movies!!!




The twin towers were twice as tall as the glass building on the left.


The small building on the right between the two larger ones is the last building to come down.


Our guide was born and grew up in Manhattan so he knew a lot of little things of interest about places in the city which was fun. He pointed out apartments of a number of very famous people like Regis, Yoko Ono, Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielburg.

American Stock Exchange

The Dakota building. When it was built there was nothing around it. Yoko Ono and John Lennon lived there. She still does on the 7the floor with the railing all around. Last year a place in the Dakota building sold for $5000 a square FOOT!!


John Lennon was murdered between those two lamposts at the Dakota building.

Strawberry Fields--a park across the street from the Dakota building in memory of John Lennon.

Mosaic by the Dutch to honor Lennon in Strawberry Fields.


Inside of Trinity Church which is located at Broadway and Wall street.

Alexander Hamilton's grave at Trinity Church.

Trinity Church and graveyard.

New York Stock Exchange

NY Stock Exchange from the steps of Federal Hall--statue of George Washington on right.

George Washington at Federal Hall. Built as a replica of the original where Washington gave his inaugural address.


Original bible used by George Washington's inaugural. Used by several other presidents including Bush.

Tree at Rockerfeller Plaza

Staten Island Ferry entrance





Trump building

When the tour was done we decided to see if we could get cheap tickets to a show that night. So what do crazy tourists do? They stand in line for an hour in the ice storm to get tickets to Mary Poppins. Which we did. There was a two story McD's across the street so we got a table by the window and stayed there for 2 hours trying to dry out and get warm---and watch the other crazy people standing in line to get tickets!!!



Mary Poppins was in the New Amsterdam Theater which is a showplace in itself. It's dated from the early 1900's and has beautiful frescos on the walls and ceiling and lots of sculpture on the posts. The show was so good--Mary Poppins was really Mary Poppins. She literally glided up the stairs each time, took all the things from her bag and flew thru the air with her umbrella. But we remembered too much from the movie and we really missed the tea party on the ceiling!!!





We never felt fear in the city. There are so many policeman all over the town and in the subways. On Wall Street there were police in combat gear with the big guns! New York City is a very security conscious city and the police are very evident wherever you go.

The weather people were right!!! Friday night a big snowstorm came through and the reason for our trip (the employment Christmas party) was cancelled. One couple had to come from New Jersey and the party was 2 hours north of NYC. It would have taken them 3-4 hours under normal conditions and the further north you went the worse the storm. So we all agreed to postpone the party til spring and we thought it would be a good idea to head home. The streets in NYC were fine so we decided to see if the Statue was visable. We drove down Broadway and saw all the places we passed on the tour. Didn't realize that everything was so close. If you had the gumption you could walk and see just about everything important. But the statue was not visable so we left. And decided that Saturday is THE day to be a tourist. There were shoppers out but the streets were very easy to navigate and nothing was crowded. The further we got from New York the worse the roads were and it took us 2 extra hours to get home. And it has continued to snow here for the last 24 hours. Only Sacrament meeting was held today because of the storm. People in the ward come from all these little towns and some can't even get out of their streets! So we're pretty well "in" for the night!

All in all we had a great trip and look forward to going back next summer when our granddaughter has a dance competition in the city. I think we'll look into taking the train tho.

We're back at the hospital in the morning for more orientation. Not much else is going on during this week. If the weather improves we might try to get downtown to see the decorations. On Christmas we're volunteering at the hospital from 9-1 so we won't be doing the traditional cinammon rolls like the rest of our family. The Relief Society president has invited us for Christmas dinner so we'll contribute some goodies for that.

We're so very grateful for our family and friends. Altho we won't be around them for the usual festivities it gives us a chance to relax and really appreciate our blessings and the reason for this celebration of life. At some point we'll miss all the family coming to our house for fun and food but we know this is where we should be. Wishing all who read this a wonderful holiday and blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I want to know if ANYONE gets thru this whole blog!!!!!!