"The Bronx is Up, The Battery's Down"
"The people ride in a hole in the ground.
New York, New York, it's a heck of a town."
New York Trip: Day 1
This last weekend we went to NYC for a family vacation. This was to be the first time for us to travel as a family where we were not specifically visiting family and where Dada was old enough to really understand where she was. I happened to need to be in Philadelphia on Friday so we made a weekend out of it. [All the pictures of this trip are in Flickr set, NYC Trip May 2007. Most of the pictures are friends and family only.]
We started with a very early flight from Austin to Philadelphia Friday morning. Our flight left Austin at 5:40 a.m. Of course, Dada woke up as we were putting her in the car and stayed awake until we were in the cab heading to my appointment outside Philadelphia, where she fell sound asleep.
Dada was a great traveler. We really didn't know what to expect but we knew that with any 3-year-old you have to be prepared for anything. As it happened, Dada only had two very minor meltdowns, the first when we tried to put the seatbelt on her on the plane in Austin, the second when we tried to put the belt on her in the cab from the Philly airport. Other than that she was happy and delightful the whole time. I think too that in the future we will try to schedule our travel to not be at quite such horrendous times.
Our plan was to take the train from Philly to NYC. We were assured that from where my meeting was, we could take a cab around 4:00 and easily catch the 5:15 train to Penn Station. The next regional train left Philly at about 6:30, so I really wanted to get that earlier train so we wouldn't be rolling into NYC really late.
We got our cab at 4:00 and started toward the 30th street Amtrak station in downtown Philadelphia, only to discover that traffic all over the area was jammed. Our poor cab driver was pretty stressed. He ended up taking really twisty back ways, but he finally got us to the train station at 5:05. We rushed in, Julie and Dada got in line for the ticket booth and I went to a kiosk to try to buy tickets. I was able to do so, after a couple of maddening false starts and we rushed for the track, which meant getting in a long line of people heading down a single escalator. But we got on the train with two minutes to spare and were headed for NYC.
In the run-up to the trip we had been explaining to Dada that we would be going to "New York City", to which she would respond "New York City?! Oh my gosh!". We have no idea where she got that, but it was painfully cute.
We arrived at Penn Station tired but happy to finally be within striking distance of our hotel. We hadn't had much to eat all day so we stopped at the first Deli we came to in the train station and had a sandwich and something to drink. Fed, we headed up and out of the station, stopping at an ATM to replenish our cash supply (the cabs in the Philly area had been way more expensive than I had expected).
We popped up into the bright afternoon sun there on 7th ave in front of Madison Square Garden. There was a long queue for cabs so we started to head for the subway until we realized we had no idea how to actually get on the subway, except that we knew we needed fare cards. So we got in the cab line and waited.
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Dada was wound up and Julie needed a rest and a little time to herself after a long day of wrangling Dada while I had my meeting, so Dada and I went down to the street to see what was happening.
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Finally we went back to the room and went to sleep, with Dada "camping out" on the floor, after a few plaintive declarations that she wanted to sleep on the bed.
The next morning I went back to the bodega to grab some bagels and coffee while Dada slept, coming back to the room just as she was waking up. We ate our breakfast and got our acts together and headed out, our eventual destination being the Museum of Natural History, by way of Time's Square.
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We were starting to get a little stressed, as we were only at 53rd St. and didn't really want to walk even to Columbus Circle at 59th (the south edge of Central Park), much less the museum up at 89th. We wanted a cab but didn't see too many, partly because the closure of Broadway had undoubtedly diverted many cabs. But finally I was able to flag one down and he whisked us to the museum.
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Eventually we popped back out into the day. We got some ice cream and sat down on a bench to each it, with Dada eating the chocolate coating while Julie and I ate the ice cream itself.
By now it was time to start heading back toward the hotel for nap time, so we wandered south, staying close to the edge of the park so we could pop back out and get on the subway. We wanted Dada to run around in the park but she would have none of it, wanting to ride in the sling. So I carried her in the sling as she got sleepier and sleepier. We eventually found the 72nd St. station, bought a couple of fare cards after a little trying (the machine wouldn't accept my ATM card when I tried to buy the second card) and went in, only to realize we'd gone in on the uptown side. But we had unlimited ride cards so we just went out and found the downtown side. Finally we made our way to Grand Central, Dada sleeping like a baby. We had to transfer at some point, I think at Penn station, which was a long walk, but we made it.
We got back to the hotel, Dada still asleep, and put her on the bed, where she immediately woke up. We also discovered that one of her tennis shoes was missing, having come off at some point on our subway trip. Julie had bought these shoes in Philly as we'd failed to bring anything other than flip flops for Dada in our haste to leave Friday morning. Oh well.
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From a family standpoint, the Tudor Hotel worked out really well, being right there in a very family-friendly neighborhood. We definitely got a little of the experience of what it's like to live in NYC with children, at least in a place where relatively wealthy people live. The main downside was that the closest subway was several long blocks away at Grand Central. But it was otherwise a nice hotel--I think we got a deal because the UN is out of session and they were having a "grand reopening", have named the hotel back to the Hotel Tudor after having been a Comfort Inn or some such for a little while (this name change seriously confused one of our cab drivers).
About four or so it was time to head towards dinner.
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After our dinner we wandered up Mulberry, taking in the sights of Little Italy, in search of a place to get some, yes, ice cream. We stopped at a little Italian bakery and gelato place, where I had an amazingly good cup of espresso, we all had fantastic little cookies, and then we had very good chocolate gelato.
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We were back in the room about 9:00. Julie succeeded in getting Dada to sleep on the floor while I took some pain killers and a hot bath to help my back, which was a little stressed from a day of carrying Dada around in the sling.
But we'd had a wonderful first day in NYC, with perfect weather and only a few travel snafus and two minor miracles (the other being that some hats we'd bought and left at the Italian restaurant were still there when we went back after eating our ice cream and realizing we'd left the hats, which we realized because we bought a little bag of cookies and wanted to put them in the hat bag to carry).
Our plan for day two was to eat dim sum in Chinatown and then visit the Statue of Liberty before heading out to Newark Airport for our 8:20 p.m. flight back to Austin.
Next up: Day 2, Wooden Ships on the Water
1 Comments:
I cannot fricking believe you found the shoe. And on what quaint little boulevard, what winding, tree-shaded country road again? 42nd Fricking Street?
Also, I'm very impressed that you carried Dada in the sling. We went to NYC with 3 year old in tow, thinking we could snub the stroller as we so often do. We were cowed by day two (and too many city blocks of carrying, albeit without sling) and broke down and bought one.
So far, this is looking like a great trip, and, given y'all's writing talents, even the not-so-great parts make a wonderful story. Hurry up and post day two!!
Catherine
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