NYC

My three photo panoramic view of Times Square

Smack-dab in the middle of our trip, we took a 2.5 hour Megabus trip into New York City. I had two older children excited to see landmarks they had only seen in photos and I apparently, irrationally, had over dramatized the volume of the crowds and terrified the two younger children.

Amazingly enough...we all had a blast!

I'm the only one in our family to have ever visited "The Big Apple" and for me, it was almost 30 years ago. When I went with my teen church choir in 1985, Times Square was a scary place where we saw drug dealers and prostitutes in broad daylight. Not so now. This is consumerism and capitalism's grand central station. Our bus dropped us off near Madison Square Garden and the kids were thrown for a loop by the people shouting at the commuters coming off the trains. I had to explain that they were just trying to sell their newspapers!

Abbey and the Phantom

For my Broadway-loving daughter, nothing less than seeing the theatre that started it all (for her at least) would satisfy. Once we found the Majestic and took the prerequisite photos, a sense of calm came over her and we could then spend a few hours wondering around mid-Manhattan.

Sunday night when we arrived in our hotel in Triadelphia, West Virginia, we were able to catch about the last half of the Tony Awards. Three days later, to see the marquees of the shows that had just been celebrated, was pretty exciting.

The iconic buildings that are so much a part of our popular culture were pretty cool to see in person.

Empire State Building

Radio City Music Hall

Rear view of Rockefeller Plaza which becomes an ice rink in the winter

Rockefeller Center

Too bad she didn't have breakfast with her

We'd just passed a little hole in the wall convenience store and I thought "That sort of looks like the one Letterman always has a camera going in" I looked up...and there it was!

In Times Square, we kept seeing costumed characters like Toy Story's Woody and Buzz, Elmo, Iron Man, Batman and many, many more. At first, I thought it was the Disney Store trying to drum up some business.

But then the naive traveller (aka ME!) finally got caught in the snare! One of the numerous Hello Kittys called Leah over to her and asked me to take a photo. After I did (even though we had to coax Leah into doing it) Hello Kitty politely opened up her white messenger bag to reveal about 50 dollar bills and said, "Donation for the photo...donation for the photo?" Yep...I felt pretty stupid...until one of The Simple Way folks told me later that they too had fallen for it. Okay...lesson learned!

This photo cost me 5 bucks! I had to save my ones for the train in Philly & I wasn't about to give her a 20!

NYC is just a different world. There is nothing to describe it. It's one of those places you just have to experience for yourself...and we just stayed within a 40 street by 6 avenue block rectangle. We've already decided that if we are ever blessed to go back we'll attempt to tackle the subway and head down to Chinatown, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the World Trade Center site.

It gives us something to look forward to.