We're Home but the Blog still needs updates!!! Part 2

Just a quick overview, and more details later:

Sunday, July25, 2010
Left Washington DC, drove to New Jersey on the border of NY. Cheaper hotel and good connections to NYC was our destination. Stopped off at a place that was featured on the Travel Channel and "The best thing I ever ate" show. A place called "Chap's Pit Beef". Not the best thing we ever ate, but better than McDonald's.

Stopped off at Chocolate World at Hershey, Pennsylvania. Quick tour and a mini chocolate bar and a walk through the gift store and we were on our way again.

Monday, July 26th, 2010 New York City
We needed to return our second, smaller car to the airport and then navigate the subway systems to get to our first destination near NYC: Liberty Island. It's very time consuming and confusing!!! Of all the big cities and the subway/public transportation, NYC is the most frustrating. Sometimes a subway line goes one way, and than at a different time, the same line goes another way. Not easy for the visitor to navigate! Russ' brother, don is on staff with World Impact and Newark, the city in NJ is a World Impact city. so we were given a name of a friend of Don's who was willing to help us with any of the confusing navigating questions we had. As we called to find out the best way to get to the Statue of Liberty, he offered to take us to the ferry! Thank you, Frank!!! we appreciate you so much!

more on our impressions of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in a few days.

Tuesday, July 27th, New York City, day 2

We had tickets to the King Tut Exhibit near Times Square. Since we didn't need to be there until 11:30, and had gotten a relatively early start, we could walk the long way from the Penn Station. We saw/walked by Macy's, Empire State Building, Broadway, Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and of course, all the neon lights of Times Square.

Afterward, we rode the subway and walked to Rockefeller Center, saw the huge Lego Store, a Toys R Us store with a large Ferris wheel in the midst of it, and finally the Nintendo World store that the boys were sooooo looking forward to. We ate at a NY pizza place - recommended as a genuine NY style pizza, although my memory of it is different, and enjoyed an Italian Ice from a street vendor.

The last thing we did was go to the World Trade Center. Ground Zero is now gone, as construction for the new buildings and the memorial has begun. They predict it will completed by September 11, 2011. There was however, across from a church, a storefront, turned memorial preview center that was open. This place captured all the memories and the emotions of that fateful day when Americans no longer looked at the world in the same way.

So like DC, there's always more to see, but we felt our visit to NY was complete. All the things we planned and then some was accomplished.