On Monday, we decided to buy tickets for the 48 hour, on/off, double decker bus tours. I hadn't done this before, so I was excited to actually have a tour guide show us the sites and give us the insider tips on where famous people live and the good places to eat. We completed the downtown tour first, which included the Empire State Building, the Flatiron building, and a stop at the new World Trade Center Memorial.
The museum part was not yet open, but they allow you to go in and tour the grounds where the original WTC buildings were located. The two waterfall memorials, which are the largest man-made waterfalls in the nation, replace the exact footprint of the previous towers and have the names of the victims etched into the design.
After that we walked down to Battery Park where you can see the Statue of Liberty. It's quite a long day of standing in line to actually go out and see the statue and Ellis Island, so we decided just to take a few pictures and move on. We hopped back on the bus and circled back up to Times Square to eat a quick supper before doing the night tour. This part of the tour went by Little Italy, over the Brooklyn Bridge,by the United Nations, and then back to Times Square. It was kind of neat to head over into Brooklyn and see the NY skyline from that view point.
At the very end of our tour it started to rain, so we walked to Grand Central Station and ate some lunch. Then we shopped around 5th Avenue before heading to a preview segment of the Jimmy Fallon show. He does a 10-15 minute segment of his monologue for a small audience as a way to test out his material for that night. Once that was done, we did the NBC tour and saw the studios for Dr. Oz, Sunday Night Football, and Saturday Night Live.
On Wednesday, it rained most of the day, so we used that as our shopping day in SOHO and Chinatown. There are so many vendors and boutique type stores down in that area, that we were able to spend almost the entire day there shopping from about 10am - 8:30pm.
Thursday, we were up bright and early to head to the Today Show. We didn't go until around 7am, but were lucky enough to sneak almost right up front. I managed to wiggle my way up there, while Sam and Nancy were about 1 row deep. We all got on TV though and were really up close to see Ann Curry, Matt Lauer, and Natalie Muralis.
We hung out most of that day around the hotel and then went to dinner and the play Wicked in the evening.
Friday, Justin Bieber was in town, and we wanted nothing to do with those crowds that had been camped out since Tuesday, so we made a trip up to Central Park. We stopped and ate lunch on the way and then immediately did a carriage ride when we got there. After, we walked the rest of the park and took a few relaxing breaks along the way (it was one of the hotter days we had, but it was great in the shade).
Later that evening, around sunset, we went to the Top of the Rock observation deck to see the entire view NYC at night.
Saturday, we just hung out around our hotel, picking up some last minute gifts, before heading to the airport for the plane ride home. It was a great trip, but good to see the kids when I got home that night.
