Just the Girls

So Tuesday morning John, Kim and the boys left for home and I stayed in New York for a couple of more days with just the girls.  We had such a great time.  Traveling became so much easier,  since we didn't have a stroller to deal with or an unmanageable four year old.   We did some site seeing that the boys wouldn't have been interested in.

After the boys left we headed out to do some more sightseeing.  We to Times Square again and then made our way across town to Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center.

We continued across town and walked down 5th Avenue.  I showed them the area where I used to work and how I would get to work.  We stopped in at Grand Central Station and then took the subway over to Chinatown.

Chinatown didn't have much to offer.  I had told them they would find lots of fun knock offs, but there wasn't anything they were interested in buying, but it was still fun for them to see another part of the city and the different flavor of Chinatown.  We then headed home to get ready for our big night on the town.

We left early enough to have dinner at a real restaurant before the play.  It was a little Italian restaurant near the theater.  It was delicious.  The best chicken parmesan I have ever had!   Afterwards we headed over to the Gershwin to see the Broadway play Wicked.  I remember the first time I visited the Gershwin was when I saw Les Miserable there 20 years ago.  

Wicked was delightful.  I love that show and have been so excited to take the girls since I saw it in Arizona about four years ago.  I knew they would love it.

We came out of the show to a perfect evening.  The weather was beautiful.  We took our time and walked up Broadway, stopping at a deli to pick up several desserts to take home to share.  

A funny side note to this day.  Earlier in the morning as we were riding the subway we were on the same car as two couples that looked like they were from Sweeden, very blond and were speaking a different language, thus I took notice of them.  That night as we came back late at night on the subway low and behold the same two couples got on our exact same subway car.  What are the chances of two random meetings on the same subway cars at 11 in the morning and then again at 11 the same night.  Very strange.  I wish I could have talked to them, but I know they recognized the coincidence as well because as they got off the subway they smiled and nodded, recognizing the little bond we had just made.

Wednesday we took the bus down to the Metropolitian Museum of Art.  It was fun to take the bus and see some of the different parts of the city.  New York changes so much from neighborhood to neighborhood.  You have the beautiful apartments on the East Side to the trendy places downtown and all the different ethnic neighborhoods scattered throughout.

It was a rainy day so it worked out well to spend the day inside at the Museum.  I know kids don't naturally love museums, but I tried to make it fun and manageable by picking out some of the more famous and well known artist and paintings.  We hit those and talked about the differences between the different artist, periods, and styles of paintings.  They were pretty good sports.

On the way back we walked across Central Park, in the rain and then took the bus up to our old apartment.  We hadn't taken the time to do it on Sunday when we were at Columbia so we stopped at Papayas one of the places we used to go for a cheap dinner, huge slices of pizza and one of the only places in New York that won't take a credit card.  We then walked to our apartment building and took some pictures.  

It was a fun and memorable day, we missed the rest of the family but we couldn't have done what we did with the boys with us.  Before we took this vacation we weighed the option of waiting a few more years till the boys were older, but we are losing time with the girls.  We decided that we can't put off doing things because not everyone is the perfect age, with a ten year span there are going to be differences.  So it was perfect to do somethings together and then save things for just the girls.  The boys will have their times as well as the girls get older and the boys are the ones at home.  I feel very lucky to have had a couple of day with just my girls.

We got up early the next morning and headed for JFK hoping to make a flight to L.V. that would get us in around 1:00 and then we could drive home from L.V. arriving by 6:00.  We already knew that a direct flight to SLC was out of the question, but luck was not our friend that day.  What had looked like a sure thing the night before suddenly became impossible as well.  So Wednesday was spent at JFK waiting for a flight to have enough open seats for the four us, since splitting up was not an option.   Each flight continued to be booked and there were about 25 of us trying to fly standby to L.V.  Finally, our great travel agent Kim, got a flight to Long Beach, CA that had a connection to Las Vegas that got us in at 9:00 that night.  We took it grateful to be on a flight, although were having fun, the boys were at home and school started on Tuesday, so we needed to get home.

We rented a car and drove as far as St George.  I hate Vegas, I couldn't get out of there soon enough.  In St. George we stayed in the biggest dive I have ever seen.  I will spare the details but it was barely adequate to lay our heads down on.  I had told John to find a cheap hotel I was starting to feel like we had burned through enough money and I didn't want to spend anymore than we had to, he did a good job in finding something cheap, but cheap comes with a price.

We woke up early the next morning and hit the road.  These were the final views of our two week vacation.  We truly traveled by train, plane and automobile.  Sorry this has been vacation overload on this blog, but if I don't write down all of the details I will forgot them.

I have a list about a mile long of places I want to go and take the family.  I know we won't be able to go everywhere, but I am glad we were able to take this vacation, it was a lot of fun and I hope they have great memories for years to come.