NYC!!!

 My mother in law offered to take me and my 2 sister in laws on a weekend trip to NYC.  Although this would be my first weekend away from Olivia, I couldn't pass up the opportunity!  This is somewhere I've always wanted to go and we had a fabulous time!  We got in early afternoon on Friday which gave us most of the day for exploring, we had all day Saturday and then returned on Sunday.

 Our hotel was right in Times Square so this is the view we had from our window!

 We spent Friday afternoon walking around and shopping.

 

 Drivers really do drive crazy in NYC, well when they aren't sitting in traffic like this.  Traffic rules and speed limits certainly do not apply here.

 There are food stands everywhere!

 Friday evening we went to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.  It was amazing!

No flash was allowed, so the pictures didn't turn out great.

Rockerfeller Center at night.. .

Because of all the lights, it always looked like day time when we looked out the hotel window. Here are some pictures of Times Square at night.

They had Mickey, Minnie, Sponge bob, Elmo, Smurfs, etc. characters all over the place.  I totally didn't get it.  I mean, I understand it is just people making money from kids taking pictures, but they just didn't belong there!

Saturday we did one of the hop on, hop off bus tours around the city.  And yes we were crazy and did one of the ones where you sit on top of the bus.  Hat, gloves and scarf were all used that day! But it was really neat to see the city from the view from the top of the bus.  So worth it!

 I will try to remember as much as possible from the tour, but I'm not sure how much that will be!

This is part of the Fashion District which is also where Project Runway is filmed.

Madison Square Garden...

Macy's...

 Empire State Building...

Some more buildings...

 The apartment buildings with the stairs like this reminded me of Pretty Woman :)  This was taken in one of the neighborhoods.  We went through several neighborhoods but they all looked the same to me and certainly not like the neighborhood we are used to seeing and living in!

 And there were tons of apartment buildings with stairs like this!  This may be Soho but I'm not really sure.

 The Court House in the back is from Law and Order.

Rebuilding the Trade Tower...

 

Where the Twin Towers once were...

 

Unfortunately we didn't have time to visit the Memorial and there isn't much you can see without visiting it since everything is fenced off.

We had planned to take a Ferry to Ellis Island to get a better look at the Statue of Liberty but when we got to that stop there was a 2 hour wait for the Ferry so we didn't feel it was the best use of the short time we had.

Wall St.

Brooklyn...

Brooklyn Bridge...

 Little Italy...

Sal's has excellent food if you are ever in Little Italy and the Italian guys who owned the place were a lot of fun also!

 

China Town...

American Girl.  I would have loved to get one of these for Olivia while we were there but she is just a little young for such an expensive doll right now.  I guess we will have to later go back to get one :)

 

Rockerfeller Center...

 

Carriage Rides for Central Park...

Central Park...

Saturday night we went to see the Broadway of the Lion King.  No pictures were allowed in the theater, but the costumes and choreography of the show were pretty amazing!

We did run into a naked cowboy on the way to the show however which certainly made our trip to NYC complete...