Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

By 8am we were on the filled train with locals heading into NYC. NYC!! I grew up on the East Coast but had only been in town one time before. For years I wanted to go back, and explore the city but other things always got in the way. Life, it does that to us. For at least the last two years ScienceKid has asked to go to NYC, first for his birthday day-fun, just for the day, but something, Grandad’s medical needs or my knee injury always got in the way. The solution to this problem—-since afterall, I believe that there is always a solution to every problem—-was to surprise SK with a family vacation to NYC as his sixteenth birthday present. And here we were, taking the train into NYC.

Our fellow companions were unaware of my excitement of heading into their town as I stood in the train’s isle. One older man sat reading a book, two folks were paging through the news the old-fashion-way, many were catching a few zzzz’s, while the vast majority of others were playing games on their IPods. Suddenly the lady sitting beside where I stood asked if I would like her seat. I chuckled, and realized that that was a first for me; do I really look that old? Isn’t that something you only suggest to old folks and pregnant ladies? There was one seat available on the train, right beside where I stood but the man (I refuse to call such a gentleman) at the isle did not move over to the center of the three-person seat but continued to play a game on his IPod. That was fine with me, really, I was enjoying the train’s movement and watching my boys expressions as we traveled east. They have been on numerous train trips before but this time we were heading into NYC.

We arrived at our destination with luggage in hand, found the elevator, I jumped in while the folks squeezed together to make room for the others, and then DH said, “We’ll wait for the next one.” The doors closed and the folks started laughing.

“You aren’t from New York are you? There was plenty of room for them.” I laughed with them and shared that DH’s roots were Ohio and no, he didn’t know there was plenty of room. We took a short cab ride over to the Omni, dropped off our bags and headed back out. We picked up our City-Pass at Planet Hollywood, found the subway entrance and took it into Chinatown. After a great lunch and long stares at the men playing checker-games in Columbus Park we walked over to the financial district. Sometime in this span the boys realized that they had already heard more languages spoken then ever before. We walked by Ground Zero, missed by a hair having a RAT run across the top of my shoe, continued to Battery Park, stared at the Statue of Liberty across the water, and suggested that we make it there on a different trip. SK thought the line for the boat to the SoL was the longest line he had ever seen. I agreed, and the characters we saw was fun too. Next we found the NYSE ‘BULL’ and chuckled at the folks taking their photo while touching his balls. We, on the other hand took the boys photo at the Bull’s head, and as one lady remarked, ‘a passport photo would show happier kids’ They were really happy however they don’t like their photo being staged. Next we walked to Wall Street, and after a short lecture about smiles being needed, they obliged.

We found Wall Street, popped into Trinity Church and found that it was really at the wall just as it is described in National Treasury. We next walked on over to the Seaport area, and enjoyed some street food along the way. By this time we were bushed, sat on a park bench in a little park and relaxed a bit before walking to the subway for a ride to Central Park. Yes, we did more walking around the park before heading back to our hotel. Finally we went out to dinner to an Italian restaurant that Zaggart gave a 22 to for cost. Yea, right. $245 later we left the place and while the food was delicious we did not have appetizers, or a salad with our dinner, or any side dishes of vegetables, and each refrained to one drink apiece. DH insisted that we each have a desert, which was delicious too, but ouch, I didn’t expect such a huge bill. Sure the service was superb but ouch. Our Chinese lunch was only $40 for the four of us, with drinks, more food than we could eat, and it too was delicious with great service, and sure this is NYC but ouch.