Visiting New York City

Greg and I recently returned from a vacation to Manhatten, NY, to visit Mackie who moved out there over the summer for a full time position at a fashion design company.  So, not only did we get to experience New York for the first time, but we also were able to visit family and have our very own tour guide.  I couldn't even tell you most things that we saw, but our days consisted of lots of walking, the subway, new places to eat, shopping, and laughing, and we were even able to convince Mackie to go running with us...twice!
 
We arrived on Friday after our flight delayed us a couple hours, so we were just in time to change clothes and go out to Time Square to experience it with all of the lights on.  I'm not sure this was the best place to choose to go first because the streets were full of people, and we had to push our way to get through the crowds.  Mackie didn't work far from Time Square, so we were able to see her work as well. 

Our friends, Jessica and Evan, who are living in Washington DC decided to come up for a day and visit with us.  Their bus got in around midnight on Friday, so we said hello and went to bed for a long day on Saturday.

We wanted to see the World Trade Center Memorial, but we didn't find out until after we got down there that a a pass was required and they only gave out a number of free passes for the day, and they didn't have any left.  All the streets were barricaded off from construction projects around it, but we were able to get pictures of the Freedom Tower that is being built.

If you look at the base of the Freedom Towers, you can see some trees,
and this was as close as we could get to the Memorial.

Next on our list was to see the Statue of Liberty, so we walked quite a distance and passed Battery Park along the way and took a Ferry over to Staten Island that went by Miss Lady Liberty.  The entire day was a little windy, so we were cold on the Ferry.

This was called an "Urban Farm".  We thought the sticks looked cool
and maybe thought the purpose was to keep people and animals out.

It was kind of crazy seeing herds of people going onto the ferry.

There was a pirate ship touring the Statue of Liberty.

After that we traveled over to Soho to have lunch and go shopping.  We had lunch at a crepe place where they had lunch crepes and those with chocolate and fruit for dessert.  They were pretty good, so I want to try making them sometime for lunch.  There were some new clothing stores in Soho that Mackie likes that are different from those around here.  We waited in a dressing room line at one of the places for a half hour and left the store only spending around $50.  Needless to say it wore us out and we went back to Mackie's to relax and drink some margaritas made from wine before we went out to dinner.

For dinner we ended up going to an Asian restaurant, and they gave us the private room in the back.  I don't know why they thought we would be too loud sitting around those in the front of the restaurant, but we didn't mind.  Greg and Evan celebrated with some Sake bombs and us girls stuck to our fruity girly drinks.  We went back to Mackie's place and decided to play Charades... It was a blast, and I wish I had pictures of us acting out, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jack Sparrow and Martha Stewart.

Mackie never took her shot, she just wanted to look cool in the picture and smile... just kidding.

We said goodbye to Jessica and Evan early on Sunday, and slept in for a few more hours.  It was so nice seeing them and we were happy they could join us and be part of our family weekend.