We woke up pretty early because we had a lot to do and see today. We wanted to get a good head start.
We left our hotel around 8:00 AM to begin our exploring.
On the corner of our street, there was a subway entrance. I had never seen a subway before so we went down to take a look.
I forgot to take a pic of the subway entrance, so I got this one from Google Earth
(web image)
Heading down to the subway:
It was really empty down there on a Saturday morning:
Back out on the street, we started walking toward NBC studios. Lisa wanted to see if we could see the TODAY SHOW being filmed.
As we walked, we went past the Wall Street Journal building:
We walked past this sign on a bank:
We walked past Bryant Park:
We walked past Radio City Music Hall:
We walked past Rockefeller Center:
It was so early, there was no one skating on the rink in front of Rockefeller Center yet:
We made it to the TODAY Show, and we were just in time to watch them film the last segment of the Saturday morning show our in the plaza.
They had an area where we could make a sign to hold up during the taping.
We were in a hurry to get over by the area where they were filming, so we didn't take much time to make our sign. We weren't planning on trying to get on TV or anything, we were kind of just playing around, which is why our sign looks kind of dumb :)
We got through the small sign check area. They were checking signs to make sure we didn't put anything awful on it before they let us into the area where they were filming.
There were only 30-50 people there, and it wasn't crowded like we thought it would be.
I went to the back of the row of people and held our sign up so Lisa could take a pic. (That's why I'm the only one holding up a sign in this pic.............they weren't even filming!)
We stood there for about 20 minutes and watched them film this exercise segment:
My sister was on cloud 9 watching this live:
After the Today Show was over, Lisa and I went back to exploring NYC.
We walked back past the ice rink at Rockefeller Center and there were a few skaters out there. I think it was around 9:00 AM
This is THE Park Avenue - the one I learned about as a kid when I played Monopoly
Our next stop was the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for breakfast.
This is a crazy expensive hotel, so we wanted to have a meal here just to say we did it. Breakfast seemed to be the most logical choice for us. We knew it would be expensive and we were right. It was the most expensive breakfast I have ever had.
We had the breakfast buffet, and everything we tried was very good. They have some amazing chefs there.
Here is the famous clock in the lobby at the Waldorf Astoria. It was made for the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893. I'm sure it was solid gold. It had several old Presidents pictures etched on the panels.
We were trying not to look too much like tourists taking pics inside the hotel, but I'm pretty sure we looked like tourists taking pics inside the hotel, LOL!
We decided since we paid so much for breakfast, we should use their restrooms before we left. Each stall inside the ladies room had its own marble sink inside.
Back out on the New York streets, we walked toward Grand Central
After we took pics at Grand Central, we went outside and found a cab. It was time to go to Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, and it was a bit too far to walk.
We weren't sure what to expect at Ground Zero. I guess I thought it was a park and we could just go walk around. Had I done my homework, I would have known it's not that easy.
There were thousands of people there, and we were all directed to an entrance. After seeing the amount of people waiting to get into the area where the World Trade Towers stood, we decided not to go inside. It looked like it might take a few hours to get in there, and we didn't want to wait that long.
We went into the gift shop and watched a film about 9/11
It was really sad to be there, even 13 years after the tragedy. It was very emotional and very somber.
The tall tower in the center of this pic is called One World Trade Center, and was just finished being built in 2012. It's 104 stories tall.
They had the area fenced and roped off. These were the best pics I could get without actually going in to the site.
I was able to zoom in on the Statue of Liberty
Here is Ellis Island. I was there several years ago, and it was worth the visit if you are into US history or family history. We were sorry we didn't have time to go there on this trip.
We were ready for something upbeat so we found another cab and asked the driver to take us to Chelsea Marketplace.
It's the old Nabisco factory. The Food Network has their kitchens in the upper floors. The bottom floor was made into many market type shops, restaurants and bakeries.
(See the old wooden floor left from when it was a Nabisco factory??!)
We walked in several shops, and I was AMAZED at how fresh the vegetables were. I wanted to shop!!!
I couldn't believe we were seeing all this fresh beautiful produce in the middle of the city.
Back in Kansas, were we have lots of um.... farms...........our produce NEVER looks like this.
Look at the bowls of spices!
And of course, the bakeries had really good looking sweets:
By now it was about 2:00 PM and we were a little tired.
We found a cab and went back to our hotel to rest for an hour or so. We also had shopped a little bit and we didn't want to keep carrying our packages around the city.
We relaxed for about an hour and we were ready to explore some more.
This time we headed for the Empire State building. Since it was only a block away from our hotel, we thought we would be able to get there fairly quickly and get up to the top.
WRONG!
There were another 3000 people who had the same idea we had.
Inside the lobby of the Empire State Building:
We waited in line to buy tickets ($27.00 pp - Yikes! Can you imagine how much money they were making just from visitors?) I wasn't joking about the amount of people there.
After we bought tickets we waited in line to go through security, then another line to get free headsets (we didn't want to do the headset tour), then another line to get into the first set of elevators to get up to the 80th floor.
I was fine until I got in the elevator. After being at Ground Zero a few hours before, I was feeling a little uneasy about going up so high in this building.
On the 80th floor, we had to wait in line again for another elevator to take us to the 86th floor observation deck. This time there was only one elevator going up, and a really long line. They told us we could take the stairs up the last 6 flights, so Lisa and I took the stairs.
6 flights of stairs cant be that bad, can they?
What a dumb idea!!! My thighs were SCREAMING on the 85th floor, and I barely made it up the last flight of stairs. WHEW! (I'm not doing that again!)
On the 86th floor:
They had an inside area up there:
We headed outside, and it was really windy up there. And cold!
The view was fantastic, and totally worth the pain of climbing those stairs to be up there.
I held my camera outside of the safety bars and tried to take a picture straight down.
I got a nice picture of a gutter:
We were really high up!
Of course, we found the Macy's and got some pics. It really is a huge store!
Looking at lower Manhattan. The tallest building is the new One World Trade Center, standing very near where the twin towers stood.
I was able to zoom in on Miss Liberty again.
We went into the gift shop before we came back down and I bought myself an Empire State Building Sweatshirt. I'm such a good little tourist!
Getting back down was a lot faster than going up. We didn't have to wait long for an elevator, thank goodness, because I was still a little creeped out being up there.
We walked back to our hotel and got ready for dinner. We hadn't eaten since our Waldorf Astoria breakfast, and we were both starving.
Lisa chose a Brazilian steak house called Churrascaria Plataforma, where they bring unlimited meats to your table if you have your "YES" sign up.
Yum! I love meat and I was very happy with the restaurant choice for the night.
We were stuffed when we left the restaurant, and winding down from a very busy day.
We felt sure we had seen everything we wanted to see,
until we spotted CAKE BOSS!!!
Of course we had to go inside!
I couldn't pass up a photo shoot with a cardboard cut out of Buddy
Looking through the windows at the Cake Boss bakers working their magic:
The cakes they had on display were gorgeous!
After visiting Cake Boss, we walked back to our hotel.
We were SO tired!! We had quite a day in NYC
Tomorrow we were heading to the airport to go home.
DAY 4 is HERE
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