Our Trip to New York

The first thing we did when we got to the room at the Intercontinental Hotel was to look out the window. It was a very impressive view. We were just above the trees next to Central Park at the middle of the short (southern) end of the park. There were huge buildings lining both sides of the park for miles, as far as you could see. Unfortunately, the window was dirty enough the photos just don't do it justice. We could also see the carriages lining up to take people through the park. The carriage rides looked interesting, but we didn't get a chance to ride on one. There was always lots of traffic on the street under our room, taxis honking and so forth, and lots of buildings and birds to look at.

Central Park was right across the street from our hotel room window. It was a pretty striking place, with the park in spring bloom, and the skyscrapers in the background. I can't imagine what that real estate is worth. It's hard to believe they had the foresight to designate it as a park. We spent a lot of time there since they had nice playgrounds and these huge rocks sticking up for Mary, Kate and Ed to climb on. Central Park is really amazing. There's a zoo, carousel, playgrounds, and thousands of people jogging around all the time. (Click here for a map of Central Park. We were on the south end between 6th and 7th street.) Musicians playing, a mens singing team from California, you name it, lots of stuff to watch and do. Busy, busy, busy place. For some reason, this picture doesn't appear to have anybody in it. Can't figure out how that happened. I promise I didn't erase them.

Mary and Kate felt they were at the circus (almost) while visiting Central Park. There were lots of horses all over, and concession stands too. We usually avoid the junk food, but we decided this was vacation, after all, so we bought them some snacks. Mary got this frozen push-up dessert stuff that just wouldn't melt. How is that possible? She loved it.

There is an old carousel in Central Park that was built in 1871. It had a pipe organ and the whole nine yards. And it was fast! For more info on the carousel, see http://www.centralpark.org/find/carousel.html When you have kids that are 4 1/2 and 6 1/2 you just can't pass up a carousel, you know.

We rode on the Staten Island Ferry (which was a free passenger ferry) past the Statue of Liberty. We were advised by friends who went to the statue itself that it wasn't worth the long lines. We didn't get real close to the statue, of course, but we went by it, and we got to see the long lines, Ellis Island, etc, plus we got to ride the ferry, of course.

What else can I say about this place. It's a big statue, it's made of metal. It was neat to see, and to imagine all those aliens landing on the shores of this country at Ellis Island right next door to the Statue of Liberty. I can imagine, that apart from the freedom part, it was nice to know the trip was over, so that statue was a welcome sight no matter how you look at it. Plus now, everyone knows we have great shopping in this country, so when you see the Statue of Liberty, you know WalMart can't be that far.


Talk about big dinosaur bones! The American Museum of Natural History has 'em by the ton. These dinosarus could've gobbled up an adult for a snack without even stopping to burp. We really just breezed through the dinosaur part, and spent most of our time at the new part, the Rose Center for Earth and Space. (I love the way when you are at their web page your pointer looks like a magic wand when you move it around!) We saw the show at the new Hayden Planetarium. It has the most advanced Zeiss planetarium projector in the world, which cost 3 million bucks. Kate wasn't interested in going to this show but we went anyway. It was very impressive, with a very visual light show covering the entire ceiling. When they moved the stars like we were flying through space at a million light years per second, they shook the floor and played a noise that sounded like the starship Enterprise moving at warp speed- Kate turned to me with her eyes wide open and asked "Are we moving?"

We also saw the "Scales of the Universe" exhibit where they explained we're on this planet, see, called Earth. It's a tiny speck in the Solar System, which is just a speck in the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy, which has billions and billions of stars, of course, is just a part of the "Local Group" of galaxies, maybe a thousand or so. The Local Group is just a speck in the entire universe of galaxies. Makes you feel very, very small. Another interesting factoid; if the existence of the universe is a time-line 400 ft long (13 billion years, where each step takes you 56 million years), the entire span of human existence on earth takes up a length no wider than a hair. And just think of all the trouble we have caused in that time. Nothing compared to the great meteor, but that's another story. So much to learn, and so little time, especially with hungry kids in tow.

All the nice hotels have doormen who's job is to carry bags and flag down cabs. You should see how fast the cabs come in when you stand at the edge of traffic like that. This doorman was obviously interested in making sure we had a good time. This sort of behavior is what you get when you have a "pay for performance" compensation system. This dorman said he likes to get in as many pictures as possible.

I wasn't trying to take a picture with nothing but cabs and busses in it, but it's not hard to do in New York. Pretty much everywhere you go it's easiest to go by cab. You can almost always get one within 60 seconds or less. By the time we left New York, even Mary knew how to hail a cab. In fact, if she got bored, she just threatened to run out to the street and hail a cab to get back to the hotel! The city has tight restrictions on cabs, so most are plenty clean and roomy. Some of the drivers are something else, though. They just zoom around like they are fearless. One driver told us he normally drives limos for a car service, but he had an accident a couple of weeks earlier, and they were fixing his limo. Since he "had to do something" in the meantine, he's driving a cab. (Did that make us feel safe, or what!) I started looking around as we drove along, and none of the cabs had dents, but none of them had the original paint either! You can just tell from the texture of the paint if it's original or not. They must have huge body shops somewhere to fix all these dented cabs.

Mary and Kate did well during the flight back. They both enjoyed taking off, and looking at the mountains and rivers on the ground during flight. They spent a lot more time giggling than fussing, at least early in the flight. Here they are serving each other mixed drinks (orange-cranberry) during the flight. Kate and Ann had the most trouble with motion sickness, but they made it home OK (if you know what I mean.)

Well, about this time you're probably saying to yourself: "Didn't they go to New York for David's wedding, or something like that?" and you would be right! Unfortunately, you know how long it takes to get real pictures developed, especially when they are on a partially completed roll of film. We can, however tell you about it, and leave the images to your imagination.

The rehearsal dinner was at the University Club, and Ann and Claire stopped by earlier in the day to see the room the party would be in, and they made a special point to meet the people at the club. They were surprised to learn that the Club makes a special point of keeping people like Ann and Claire out of the club and on the street where they belong! You see, Ann was wearing blue jeans, and Claire had tennis shoes on her feet. Well, while they may look like riff-raff, they can still think on their feet. Ann traded shoes with Claire, and Claire was able to slip by their riff-raff detector unnoticed, and check out the accomodations for the party. Ann received a special dispensation to wait inside where it is warm, but a guard was posted around the corner just in case. Anyway, things looked fine, and the party that evening was great. We got to visit many of the friends and relatives and had a great dinner of some small stuffed bird. Was it pigeon? They are available locally in New York. Or maybe it was cornish game hen. Whatever it was, it was about the size of a pigeon and it tasted yummy! And the dessert, well, it had about 2 pounds of chocolate stuffed into one pound of dessert, and was covered in melted chocolate fudge. Wow! What a dinner.

We arrived to the loft in Greenwich Village the next evening in plenty of time for the wedding, and we waited forever it seemed for David's Aunt Mary Ella and her husband Rollin to arrive, which they steadfastly failed to do until about an hour late, well after the wedding was over. Of course, people thought of all kinds of horrible things that could have happened. One day soon, people will realize all they have to do to figure out what's going on is to grab their handy-dandy Motorola Star-Tac phone (which all these folks have) and call someone else on their handy-dandy Motorola Star-Tac phone, and ask "Like, what's up? I'm like, lost or somethin!" Unfortunately nobody knew anyone else's cell phone number, so we called their room (at Ann-the-Plan's suggestion, from my handy-dandy Motorola Star-Tac phone thankyouverymuch) and left a message with the correct address in the hopes that was all that was wrong which it was even though everyone wanted to believe the worst, with those taxi drivers, you know. Then Mary Ella and Rollin drove back to the room to get their voicemail, then drove back to Greenwich Village, which explains the hour delay. It was a low tech solution, but it worked. In case any of you do not know our phone numbers, just click here to email me for my cell phone number.

Anyway, enough shameless Motorola cell phone plugs, and spellbinding tales of near death experiences that never were.

Leslie was beautiful, and her dad and I explained to David how he should behave after the wedding (Lot's of *Yes, dear's* and *You're right, dear's* and so forth.) I think he got it. We spent several hours eating great food, visiting with all the relatives, and David and Leslie's New York friends, including Gresham, who looks surprisingly like Smith Benners, down to the mannerisms, but he just isn't as gross and disgusting as Smith. I did my best to help Kate figure out which utensils were hers and what order to use them (she had 6 or 8 pieces) and which glasses were hers (she had 4). The girls kept their napkins in their laps the whole time mostly, and kept their dresses clean even though they tried to wax the floor with them while dancing. The music was selected by David, in honor of Smith, with Marvin Gaye, and all kinds of other great Motown dance tunes. Pretty much everyone got up to dance, including Claire, and Bill, Alma, Rollin and Mary Ella, etc. I can tell you the best dancers in the family are Aunt Juli and Aunt Ann, who claim their advantage comes from their generous posteriors.

Well, that pretty much covers it. We had fun, got in and out of there with no collateral damage, and we're back on our old schedules again. Hope you enjoyed the story about the trip.