Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Today we had tickets at 11:00 to go visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, so we got up reasonably early, had breakfast at the hotel and headed to the subway for the trip downtown. We got to the ferry dock in plenty of time, only to discover that Ellis Island was closed because there was no water. They assured us that we could use our ferry tickets at any other time during our vacation, and so we were left with an unscheduled day. What to do, what to do… We started to walk towards Wall Street figuring we could see the WTC site, Wall Street and Trinity Church. We stopped at this playground along the way full of nannies and their charges with a few parents mixed in. Charlotte made it to the top of the play structure!

We saw the construction site of the WTC, then walked to the winter garden and then to the park along the Hudson River.  Then we walked to Trinity Church where we looked at all the old gravestones before going into the church where a service was going on that was soooo close to a Catholic mass but not quite. From there we walked past the New York Stock exchange, admired all of the old buildings around Wall Street and then headed back to the subway which we took to SoHo for lunch and shopping. The shopping was a bit of a bust because we were hoping for unique boutiques where us girls could pick up some accessories but instead it was all high end chain stores much like we find here in San Jose at Santana Row. It was getting way past lunch so we found a little expensive bistro where they were nice to the kids at least!Mark had decided that he would go to a Yankees game this evening and Charlotte was dying to go to the American Girl store, so we went back to the hotel to rest. Genevieve and I went to a few of the women’s clothing stores near our hotel, where I got a shirt at Kara (knock off of Zara) and another shirt from a little boutique at the bottom of our hotel that was going out of business. Once we got back to the hotel, Mark headed out the to game. Charlotte got her doll, Ruthie’s, ears pierced, and spent all of her money on a bunch of new clothes for her. She was one happy kid! Then I used Yelp to find a good restaurant for us, which turned out to be Little Italy pizza, cheap, fast and good. After we ate our pizza we got cupcakes and then returned to our hotel for the night. I really wanted a glass of wine (if I was going to be stuck in a New York hotel at 8:00 with two girls and no other adults for company I might as well have wine) but no stores seemed to sell it. I went to the hotel bar and paid as much for a glass as I would for a whole bottle and the bartender confirmed that in NYC only liquor stores can sell wine. That would just never fly in California! The girls and I watched Valentine’s Day and Mark came home late very happy about the game.

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