We spent 2 days in NYC- Saturday and Sunday. We took a bus tour with Grayline, and that was the best thing we ever did! When you buy a tour, it’s good for 2 days, so you can hop on and off their buses as much as you please for those 2 days. It’s like your own personal taxi! The first day, we took the whole entire tour without getting off anywhere. The tour was 2 parts- downtown (where everything is), and uptown (more residential). Downtown was really neat. We started off by going to Times Square. They had so many billboard advertisements here- very colorful! Then we went to the theatre district. I didn’t know that Broadway encompassed so many theatres- over 50 different shows are there right now. Then we went to Greenwich Village. This area used to be farmland. There’s something about this land that won’t hold skyscrapers. Most building here are under 7 stories. It’s a really neat area- seems very collegiate. We saw SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown also- not much to report on these areas though! We went to Battery Park, where you can see the Statue of Liberty. It’s much smaller than I imagined. We went through the financial district, where the World Trade Center, Wall Street, NYSE, etc. are. It was quiet in this area, because it was the weekend. We even got to see the garage where the truck pulled in to bomb the World Trade Center. The next stop was South Street Seaport, where all the boats dock and the fish market is held. I can’t imagine this place in the summer- it smelled bad in 60 degree weather! We saw Rockefeller Center and the building where they shoot the Today Show. It’s kind of neat to see it in person. Then we did the Uptown Tour. This wasn’t nearly as exciting- we basically saw the buildings where famous people live/lived- Jerry Seinfeld, Yoko Ono, Jackie O, etc. We saw Central Park- quite amazing to have such a large park on an overcrowded island! The scary part of our trip was Harlem. It’s amazing how crossing a street can bring you into a slum area. I’m glad it was part of our tour, because we would have never ventured there alone! We saw lots of different museums, but didn’t go in any. We took the train into the city each day into Grand Central Station. They’ve redone the station, and it looks great- lots of marble. After our tour, we walked to the Empire State Building and went to the top. It’s quite a view from there. We took a lot of photos from all the sides. You just can’t believe how many buildings they pack into the tiny island of Manhattan. Everyone you see (natives of NYC) looks frantic and stressed out! It’s nice to visit, but there is no way we could ever live there!

Day 2 and more

Are you still with me??? We took the Downtown Tour again, this time getting off at several different stops to see things better. We went to Times Square to get tickets for a Broadway play- you can get them at a discount on the day of the show. We also saw the Soup Nazi’s Soup Kitchen (from Seinfeld). Our next stop was Greenwich Village. One of my favorite chefs from the Food TV cable channel is Mario Batali (Molto Mario), and he owns an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village called Po (Po is a river in Italy). We were able to find the restaurant and ate lunch there! Mario wasn’t there, but it was fun just the same. The restaurant was very tiny- maybe 10 tables. We couldn’t find it in any travel guides, so it’s a well-kept secret. The prices were very reasonable-$9 for lunch in NYC! I think his restaurant might be a test kitchen for his TV show. Next, we were off to Battery Park. We took the Staten Island ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. We didn’t actually go to Ellis Island, because of time constraints. We had a great view of the statue from the ferry, and it only took 1 hour round trip. We also had a neat view of South Manhattan from the water. Our next stop was for dinner and our Broadway play. We saw "I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change". It was a really funny show about relationships. They billed it as "Seinfeld-esque". We had to run to catch our train. We made it with 7 minutes to spare! It was a long and tiring 2 days, and we were ready for a break. That’s when we decided to tour Connecticut and Rhode Island.

We drove along the coast of CT- and made a few stops along the way. We went to see Yale Univ. Very unimpressive! I pictured nice ivy-covered old buildings on a nice campus- like MSU’s, but there were very few older buildings, and it seemed to be the city and the campus were intermingled. Not at all what I expected from a prestigious university. We saw several different lighthouses, but they were inaccessible by car- they seemed to be on small islands or buoy-like in the middle of the water. There were a lot smaller lighthouses than I expected, but then again, they’re old too. We then ventured on to Rhode Island. We went to Jamestown, and into a state park on the edge of the water- very beautiful. We then went over a bridge onto an island, and into Newport, RI. This city reminded us a lot of Mackinac Island, but with cars. We took a "Cliff Walk" along the edge of the island. We actually were climbing on boulders at some points on this path. It was a really neat walk- very high up from the water, and a great view of the ocean and surrounding coasts. We saw several summer "cottages"- Vanderbilt, Astor, etc. These cottages were enormous mansions! Hard to believe they called them cottages back then. I guess a lot of famous people spent their summer vacations here. We had dinner at The Pier restaurant, and were able to sit overlooking the water. We headed back after dinner- a 3-hour trip back. The next day we went into Norwalk, CT, near where we were staying, and spent the day at the aquarium and at surrounding beaches. Quite a relaxing way to wrap up our trip!