And we're home

We're back from New York! Sorry I didn't blog after that first day -- we unexpectedly didn't have Internet after Wednesday.

I had SUCH a good time. In retrospect, I cannot believe how much we fit into four days.

The first thing we did Thursday was buy unlimited subway passes, which opened up a whole new world (i.e. we could go places we couldn't walk). First we went to the Statue of Liberty, or at least as far as the ticket line, which eventually we agreed was just too long (several hours, we estimated). Amanda had been to Ellis Island before, and I hadn't but I didn't care to. Mom decided she could live without it, considering the wait, so we started walking north.

We went to Battery City Park, the World Trade Center site, Chinatown and Little Italy. The weather was perfect -- sunny and low 70s. In the late afternoon we went back to the hotel to beautify for "Rent," which did not disappoint! It turned out that our seats were in the very top row, but they were still good. When that was over we went to the top of the Empire State Building so Mom could get the full effect of the beautiful city. Loved it, loved it.

Friday we did a little shopping in midtown before going to Greenwich Village, where we stumbled upon two thrift stores, one of which was not bad at all. The other was OK but it didn't have a dressing room. We were really caught up in shopping and kept at it right through lunch, until around 3:30 p.m., when we realized we were on the verge of starvation. We ate at a Peruvian restaurant (it was between that and a Five Guys), then we walked to SoHo, where we didn't stay long because we could hardly afford to window shop.

From SoHo we went to the Brooklyn Bridge. It wasn't the best day for it -- overcast, chilly and a little drizzly -- but it was still stunning, or at least I thought so. On the way back to the hotel we went through Grand Central Station just so Mom could say she'd been. It wasn't nearly as crazy as I remembered. It was dinnertime when we got back to the room but we weren't really hungry, so we crashed for a while and then walked to Times Square for hot dogs and pretzels.

Saturday we got a late checkout (1 p.m.) and we went to Central Park for breakfast, we thought, only there weren't many options, so we skipped eating. We thought about going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but we decided we couldn't do it justice in just a couple of hours, which was all we had.

We walked to Lexington Avenue (letting us see Fifth, Madison and Park avenues on the way). There we found a good little bakery for brunch, and another customer told us where to find a few thrift stores nearby. We ended up finding about six of them and I think we each got at least something, but overall they were kind of disappointing -- small and overpriced. I did find some extremely cute shoes, though.

We didn't really need to leave for the airport until about 2 p.m., but we would have had to carry around our bags, and we were worn out, so we decided to go on to the airport and just be early.

I had such, such, such a good time! I think this is the first trip Mom, Amanda and I have taken by ourselves and we were a great combo. I think we're going to make it an annual event (the trip, not necessarily New York).

We took way too many pictures to post them all, but I will put up some of my favorites soon.