2012 AUTUMN TRIP TO NEW ENGLAND -- Day 1-NYC

On October 2nd, we got on a plane with our friend, Diane Shurtliff, and flew into the New York, LaGuardia airport.  Part one of our New England adventure was New York City with Diane.  For the longest time I, Sue, had held a  dread and fear of New York City, based on rumor and things I'd seen on TV.   I'd heard many times how rude the New Yorkers were.  Everyone has seen TV shows of the crime and violence that often takes place in New York City -- So it was with restrained anticipation that I had helped plan the NYC part of this trip.

We reserved rooms in Queens at the Howard Johnson (above), and bought Metro Tickets to get us in and out of the City.  

I was so glad that Dave and Diane were there to find the right metro gates and boarding places.  It was a puzzle to me.

We purchased a three day pass on City Sights NY, a double-decker bus to get us around the city.  For $90, our ticket included a pass to the top of the Empire State Building, a cruise around Manhattan Island, tickets for the Statue of Liberty and a pass to the NYC museum.  It was actually a pretty good deal, and we made good use of it.

Our visit to the Statue of Liberty was inspiring.

One of the first things we did was to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  Audio tours with headphones informed about France's gift of the statue to us, and the monumental job of its construction.  
The Statue of Liberty -- Liberty Enlightening the World  is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Fre'de'ric Bartholdi, and dedicated on October 28, 1886. The statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman Goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tablet evoking the law upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.  A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue is an icon of freedom and of the United States: a welcoming signal to immigrants arriving from abroad.

Ellis Island was our next stop.  I was impressed that it was such a beautiful building.  Again, with the head-phone tour we learned a lot about how stressful it must have been for our immigrating fore-fathers to pass through this immigration spot after such a long, difficult journey.  It had to have been exponentially harder than our immigration entrance into Saudi Arabia after a 27 hour trip by air, and we thought that was hard.

A most impressive part of our tour of NYC was the 9/11 Memorial.  We had made reservations for a 4:00 PM entrance.  A palpable, somber, and reverent atmosphere was strongly felt as we entered this place of so much sadness and loss.  We were very impressed with the design of this memorial.
Time Square was also on our agenda.  We talked to an agent for the Broadway Tickets kiosk where we learned that we should be in line at 2:30 PM the next day to get our theater tickets for the evening that we wanted to see the show.  We looked at all the possibilities, and decided that we'd like to see either the Blue Man Group, or Phantom of the Opera.  So we planned to return on the next day at 2:00 PM.
 
Of all the good restaurants around Time Square that we could have chosen, we decided on Olive Garden for dinner.  This was a mistake.  The prices were double what we would have paid at the American Fork Olive Garden, and the bread sticks were stale.  They were very crowded, slow, and the waiter had an attitude.  It's not always good to stick with what you know. Let this be a warning to all who follow -- skip the Olive Garden at Time Square.
We returned to our room -- very, very tired, and learned that the Presidential Debate didn't start at 7:00 PM as we thought it would.  Of course, we fell asleep waiting for the 9:00 PM beginning.  We didn't miss too much though, and were very pleased at how well Mitt Romney did.
It was a good day, full of a lot of fun!