A Weekend in NYC!

 A little over a month ago I talked to Ollie and he agreed to let the girls and I fulfill a dream of mine...to spend a weekend in NYC.  We found a great deal on the flight and hotel and our trip was planned!  Over the next couple of weeks it evolved and Devin and his mom joined us.  Soon after, we found out that Anabel and Tobi would be in town the same weekend.  I did a little bit of research before we left about how to use the subway system and we had a loose list of things we really wanted to see but other than that, we were flying by the seat of our pants. 

 Our flight left in the morning and we were in NYC by early afternoon.  We took a few minutes to dig out our winter weather gear and we were off to find our way to the hotel using public transportation.  I love a good challenge like this, no boring, expensive taxi ride for us!  It was a bit of a comedy of errors from the beginning...

 We got our Metrocards and headed out to the bus stop and soon the bus came.  We hopped on and immediately got yelled at for not having a bus ticket...oops.  Off the bus we went with all of our luggage and back to the curb where we found the machine to get a bus ticket.  We got on the bus and nobody even asked to see our tickets but we had them and we looked like we knew what we were doing this time.  Until...we missed our stop and decided to pull the cord asking the bus driver to stop for us.  We assumed he would so we stood up with all of our luggage and then had to continue standing and standing until he finally decided to stop about 5 minutes later.  It was a long 5 minutes.  We got off the bus and really had no idea where we were or where the subway station that we needed was.  Thankfully there was a map and a nice lady who stopped to help us.  She pointed us in the right direction (I was confused because it was above ground instead of below ground) and we made our way in.  Then we had a debacle trying to get through the turnstiles with our luggage.  We finally managed though...and made it on to the subway where we had our first unique NYC experience. 

 Some guys got on the subway and said, "Everybody stand back and no one gets kicked!"  Then they turned on some music and did some impressive breakdancing/Parkour moves for our entertainment.  They were great and we thoroughly enjoyed our intro to New York.  We got off at the right stop this time and only had a block or so to walk to our hotel.  We got checked in and the girls and I got a free upgrade to our room and ended up with a suite with a kitchen, living room, and bedroom!  The hotel was old but very nice and in a perfect location.  We were just two blocks from Central Park and about 6 blocks from Times Square. 

 Tobi and Anabel met us at our hotel and we immediately set out for Central Park to play in the snow! But not before stopping at Starbucks for coffee (there was one right across the street from our hotel).

 The weather was great!  It was cold but not too cold and there was still lots of snow on the ground.  We walked for a while and found Strawberry Fields where there is a memorial to John Lennon.  I don't know why I didn't upload any pictures of that...oh well.  We took tons of pictures in the park and Devin's Mom, Chris, played in the snow and made a snow angel and she and Devin had a snowball fight.  He had never seen that much snow in his life so it was a lot of fun for them.  We eventually headed back to the hotel and stopped in some souvenir shops along the way.

Back at the hotel we got ready for our evening, we had tickets to Les Miserables.  We walked from our hotel to Times Square and found the theatre and then found a place to eat dinner close to the theatre.  Times Square was amazing and the kids loved it.  They were in awe and I love the pictures I got of them experiencing it for the first time. 

 Les Mis was an incredible show and despite our exhaustion from our day we all were mesmerized by the performance.  I will admit to taking a short nap during a very long song between Cosette and Marius...just enough to wake me up to finish the show.  Les Mis will end it's run on Broadway in September so I'm really glad we got to see this incredible show.