New York: Day 2

Here is a picture of the Manhattan, New York Temple (courtesy of lds.org).  On one of the floors is a chapel and classrooms for Sunday meetings.  So, we went to church here on Sunday!

Riding a subway to church was really different for the kids (well all of us actually).  

Here is Austin in his Primary class.  He had fun.  

Abby said she was the oldest Young Women there that day . . . not as many teenagers in this ward.

All in all, the church is the same wherever you go!  

I liked the kids seeing that.  They were able to see that the way Sacrament Meeting, and other meetings they go to on Sundays, are done the same way.  And that many people across the country (and world) are doing the same things that they are doing.

New York: Day 1

We bought a selfie stick.  It was the first time where Ben and I felt like we REALLY needed one.

Since we were in line for the Statue of Liberty, our stick is decorated with an American Flag.  It is awesome . . . and quite useful.  No more asking strangers to take our picture.

Here we are in line to see the Statue of Liberty.  We bought our tickets well in advance, but not in advance enough to get tickets to go up to the crown of the Statue of Liberty.  Our tickets got us up to the pedestal, which is 2nd best and still pretty awesome.

To get over to the Statue of Liberty, you take a 20 minute or so ferry ride.  

Here is the original torch held inside the Pedestal lobby.  It was removed in 1984 and replaced with the current torch in 1986.  Apparently, the tour used to include an option to go up to the torch as well as the crown and pedestal,  but has been closed to the public since the "Black Tom"
 explosion on July 30, 1916.

I don't think I had ever seen what the back of the Statue of Liberty looked liked before.  It was so interesting to see different angles in real life.  Beautiful and majestic.  

One of my favorite things we did in New York.  I would do it again.

After visiting the Statue of Liberty, the ferry takes you over to Ellis Island which is just a short distance away.  There is a short film you can view once you get inside (I highly recommend to watch it) that describes what Ellis Island was used for and gives a feel for how it was for over 12 million immigrants who came through here to come to the United States.  

This building had a special, quiet, almost sacred feeling to it.

Riding the subway back to our New York home.

Day 1 was awesome and I was able to check these sites off my bucket list!

Philadelphia Stop

We stopped in Philadelphia on our way into New York.

We didn't have a lot of time, but had enough time to check out the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall!

Luckily, the line wasn't too bad to see it up close.

I felt SO far away from home.  

I felt like we would definitely win the "came the farthest to see this" award . . .

But then I learned that the people who took our family picture above were from Idaho.

We were not able to get tickets to tour Independence Hall, but we walked around it and went into the Visitor's Center as well.  This situation is something else I wish we had done differently.

Online tickets were no longer available, but we might have had a chance at
getting tickets to Independence Hall if we could have been there 

around 8am . . . or earlier?  Our original plan was to drive to Philadelphia after spending the day in D.C..  We had a room reserved . . . that way Ben could get up early to get in line for the tickets.

But when we checked into our hotel in D.C., we were a little tired . . . and the idea of packing up the car again in the morning felt a little daunting.  We thought it might be better to spend the whole day and evening there and not feel like we still have a 2 hour drive ahead of us (which really is nothing at this point, right?  But still).  So we chose to stay in our hotel in D.C. instead, and planned to drive to Philadelphia in the morning after the D.C. day . . . knowing we would probably not be able to get tickets, but figured maybe we would see more in Washington D.C..

But since the kids wore out much quicker than I thought they would in D.C., it would have been just fine to have that 2 hour drive at the end of the day.  So . . . I wish we had done that :(

BUT . . . the kids really liked having some time to swim in the pool and just be out of the car . . . which wouldn't have happened with our original plan.

After spending what felt like a minute in Philadelphia, we drove into New York!

Here we are in front of our Manhattan apartment for the week!

It was so fun to feel like we could move in for awhile, and leave our car behind.

We unpacked our things, and then took our car over to Queens (much cheaper parking) to leave it in a garage for the week.  The apartment we were staying in had no parking, and really I am not sure where we would have parked it anywhere we went.  Cars seem really inconvenient there.

We bought 7 day unlimited subway passes . . . and began our New York adventure!

Washington D.C.

We had ONE day to spend in Washington D.C.!

Because we had heard it is hard to park close to anything in Washington D.C., we left our car near our hotel and rode the subway in.  

We decided to visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum first.

It is a pretty awesome museum!

 

Here, the Ben and kids are standing in front of 

the Appollo 11 Command Module that actually went to space!

After exploring the museum, we had some lunch in a very fancy McDonalds :).

Then we headed to the White House!

It is pretty, but not as majestic as I had imagined.  We were not able to get a tour inside, but it was fun to walk around the outside.  I think it would be weird to live in a house with so much security surrounding it.  There were security guards everywhere . . . and tourists taking pictures :).

From the White House, we went to see the Washington Monument and then on over to the Lincoln Memorial.  These sights were a little farther apart than Ben had remembered, so the kids felt like they were walking SO MUCH :)

It was a good warm up of what was to come in NYC though . . . where I knew we would be leaving our car in a parking garage and riding a train around for a week :)

I LOVED the Lincoln Memorial.  It was my favorite thing we saw in D.C.

The kids were worn out after these activities.  The late afternoon was spent swimming in the hotel pool, eating dinner, and going to bed!  The day was AWESOME! 

 If I could do it again though, I would have arranged for one of those BIG BUS tours where you can hop on/hop off.  It would have been a good way to see more sights in a short amount of time.

But we had a great time, and we saw what we had planned on seeing.