New York City: Day 1

Earlier this week Scott went to his annual conference in New York City... and this year I got to tag along with him! My mom watched the kids so I had nothing to worry about and really enjoyed the trip. Since I don't have much else to blog about I thought I'd write a few posts with lots of pictures, so break out your readers!

The first day (Sunday) we got to NYC and checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Waldorf Astoria (thank you Principal!) which was a great location in the middle of everything. Here's what the main lobby looked like... lots of fancy people, but still some "regular" people like us too :)

We jumped on a double decker tour bus line right away. I really reccommend these, they were a great way to see sooo much very easily. It was helpful to do the tour around the city first, and then decide what we wanted to go do and see. This was Times Square at about 2pm. Lots and lots of people and shopping.

The New Years Eve ball still sits on top of one of the tall TV screens.

I took this picture of Toys R Us for Joel :)

Still on the bus, these were some World Trade Center tiles that children and students painted. They will be on display at the new memorial, but for now they were just tied to a chain link fence along the tour bus route

There were hundreds of them! This is just one small section...

We got off the bus at the World Trade Center site. There really wasn't much to see though, thanks to construction. It was surreal to think that two of the tallest buildings used to stand where there is now empty space. They are building a memorial where the buildings used to be, and also this very tall tower called the Freedom Tower.

You could go inside a shopping center and see the area where they used to be.

Then we walked around the harbors on the south side of the island and Battery Park. You could see the Statue of Liberty in the distance, but we didn't go out onto the ferry.

Posing for a pic...

This is what we walked along, very cute area!

then we hopped back on the bus.... drove by the Empire State Building

And got off again at the Grand Central Station

That night we just walked around, saw Rockefeller Center up close...

And made our way down to Times Square

It's very different at night than it was during the day!

And that was the end of Day 1....much more to come....