Last Christmas we spent 12 hours at the airport on Christmas Day & finally came home at 2:30 in the morning because our trip to New York was cancelled. Thank you Southwest Airlines. In case you don't remember, they had a system wide outage & had problems for at least a week. Long story short, our luggage made it to NY for around 10 days, but we never did. So I took that entire trip & re-booked it for this year. Last year we heard how awful it was being in the city over the holiday so we decided to change it up this year & we pulled the girls out of school for a few days & took a 5 day trip the week before Christmas to beat the crowd. We left the house at 4:30 am on Wednesday morning, were in the air by 6:00 & had landed at Laguardia by 10:00:
We were excited to get there early so we would have most of the day to explore. From the beginning, we could tell this trip would be better than last year & it more than made up for it! We had no delays & when we got on the plane, the pilot called the girls in to the cockpit which was exciting:
I kept telling the girls this is the best time to travel because everything is decorated so pretty, including the airport & there is Christmas music playing everywhere. We even had a school choir performing at the airport so we were serenaded while waiting for our luggage:
We caught a ride to our hotel in Manhattan - we stayed at the Sheraton, which was close to Times Square & Central Park. It was a fantastic location:
After we unpacked, we grabbed lunch & then headed to our first stop:
The girls have been to NY twice, well technically Sadie twice, Sophie once, but they were too little to do too much or they don't remember so our first 2 days were booked with touristy excursions. We lucked out because the weather was beautiful & there was no one there. That seemed to be the case for everything we did on Wednesday & Thursday - I guess because it is a weekday & it's cold & not quite the holiday yet. We went up to the 86th Floor first, walked through the museum to learn the history, saw King Kong & all of the famous movies that have been made here:
We finally made it to the observation deck outside:
The whole time we were up there, we saw a NYPD helicopter flying around us:
Sophie ran into Buddy the Elf:
Then we headed upstairs on another elevator to the 102nd floor. This floor is much smaller & there is no outdoor deck, but floor to ceiling windows:
I am literally not exaggerating when I say it wasn't crowded - we didn't even have to wait for an elevator! On our way out, I couldn't help but take a picture of the candy empire state building downstairs that was part of their Christmas display:
At this point, the girls are just having fun walking around & exploring the city, but we had time for one quick stop before we headed to dinner - the Harry Potter store! I had heard this was one of the few that existed besides going to Universal Studios. Sadie went there when she turned 10 & she has always talked about the butter beer so we thought it would be fun to surprise the girls:
Butterbeer is gluten free but unfortunately the ice cream is not, so we ordered a couple of rounds of drinks to share:
We were meeting friends for dinner at their house on the Upper East Side so instead of walking, we introduced the girls to the subway! Again, they rode it when they were little but they don't remember. We went ahead & bought a week pass so we could use it whenever we wanted. This may surprise some, but our girls LOVED the subway! Who knew?!
We walked most of the time, especially if it was 20 minutes or less, but since it was cold, if we were going downtown, or trying to get somewhere fast, we would ride. They loved the people watching, the entertainment & probably not having to walk since we dragged them all over the city!
After we met our friends at their house, they took us to a local restaurant in their neighborhood which was fun, because we got to see where their kids go to school & how they live. It is definitely much different but they had so much fun with Campbell that night:
and we had fun getting to see Randy & Kristin again! They were nice enough to escort us back to the subway for our ride home:
On Thursday morning, the girls were excited to wake up & see that Ellie had flown in to meet us:
This was our longest & busiest day we had planned so we got up & headed downtown to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. I had scheduled a guided tour of the museum inside which was well worth it. Again, there wasn't a single line, we walked right in & our tour guide was fantastic! We chose one that only lasted for an hour so the girls would stay engaged & to be honest, I didn't take many pictures inside because it is such a somber experience. I truly enjoyed just listening & taking in the moment:
I didn't realize (or I had forgotten) that the night before they had severe storms so it was an incredibly peaceful & beautiful morning after the chaos the night before. Pilots actually call it sever clear because it is exceptionally clear after the storms passes. Someone coming in on the ferry actually took this picture that morning because he noticed how fantastic it was also & they said this was supposedly one of the last photographs taken before the towers fell:
Sadie loves historical fiction & reads a lot of books in that genre so she was really captivated by the tour. Sophie was a little young & got bored the longer it went, but they were both troopers. This was one of my favorite art exhibits there. The artist said he was trying to capture/remember the shade of blue in the sky that morning because it was such a beautiful day:
After our tour we walked through the museum by ourselves but the girls were hungry & they were done so we briefly went outside & walked around the memorial fountains before we left:
Next time we go back to NY, I would spend more time here when it is a little warmer. On our walk to lunch, Sophie was excited to see this:
Speaking of food, I will do a separate post about our meals because we ate at some fantastic restaurants! Literally some of the best gluten free eating I have ever done while traveling. I researched a lot ahead of time so I knew exactly where I wanted to go when we were on whatever side of town. This day, we had the best gf pizza I may have eaten!
After lunch we headed to catch the ferry to Staten Island where we had a reservation for the Statue of Liberty:
In case you didn't know, it is basically the price of the ferry you are paying to get to the island, but once you are there, it doesn't cost any more to go up. The catch is they have a limited number of tickets available every hour due to crowd control but since I booked this back in July/August, we were able to secure tickets to go up. And again, it wasn't crowded at all! We learned later that the mornings are busier here & since we went late in the day, that helped also. We went up to the pedestal first, which is at the top of the brown, below her green body. You can walk 360 degrees around the pedestal to see every direction:
Most people do the pedestal but if you are lucky & can reserve tickets early enough, you can go up into the crown. They have an elevator that takes you to the pedestal but there is only a small staircase that leads you to the crown & it has 162 steps. The girls were troopers so we made the trek:
Look how tiny it is up there! You can probably only fit 10 people at a time, including the 2 park rangers that were up there waiting for us. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was thinking something different than this!
This is the view down the left side where you can see her tablet:
And this was looking up on the right side to her torch:
It was enclosed & you could only see out these tiny windows, kind of like airplane windows. This was the view from the pedestal looking up at the crown:
I really enjoyed visiting the statue & was so glad we went all the way to the top! So many said it wasn't worth it, but we really enjoyed it:
Again, I cannot emphasize how awesome the weather was! It was cold but it was perfectly clear so we had beautiful views of the city all around.
When we left, we stopped by a bakery while we were downtown. Spoiler alert - it was legit & worth the stop! But afterwards we found a clinic to take Sadie. Her throat started hurting the night before we left & it had increasingly gotten worse while we were there. It probably didn't help that we were outside in the cold & walking all over the city instead of resting but once she started getting a cough, I figured we should take her in:
Thank goodness she tested negative for flu, strep & covid so we bought her some over the counter medicine & kept on going......
While I was at the clinic with her, Bryan & Sophie hit up the food trucks for dinner. Sophie was SO excited to have the churro & the pretzel! They even grabbed drinks at Starbucks & were set for the night:
We met them at the subway & headed back North to meet friends for our next surprise..... I'll post tomorrow on what happened next!
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