Day 9 New York, 9/11 Memorial, Trinity Church, Wall Street, Charging Bull, Central Park, Manhattan Temple, 30 Rock, Empire State Building, Flat Iron Building, 5th Avenue

We finally made it to New York, but we had a few hiccups on the way.  The night before as we checked into our hotel Sarah and Matthew were just droopy.  I went to see if they were okay, but when I touched them they were burning up with a fever.  Poor kids.  We finished unloading the car and getting our hotel room settled when I tried to unzip my suitcase and it completely fell apart. DOH!  After that Aaron and I went out to pick up dinner for the kids as well as a new suitcase and some cold medicine.  We went to Walmart (I really HATE Walmart by the way), but beggars can't be choosers, right?!  Well when Aaron and I got to the closest Walmart it was PACKED!!  We drove around a while just to find any open parking spot.  When we got inside things weren't much better.  We could really tell we weren't in Utah anymore....When we walked in it looked like Black Friday on steroids.  We had to ditch our shopping cart just to get through the aisles it was crazy!  No one spoke English, either.  There were all kinds of languages being spoken, but no English.  Even the overhead announcements weren't in English.  We tried to quickly pick up some bottled water, some cold medicine, and a suitcase.  When we got to the suitcase aisle everything was pulled off the shelves so you didn't know what went where or how much anything was.  I decided to work something else out about my suitcase (i.e. stuff my things into someone else's suitcase) and ditch the suitcase aisle.  We then worked our way to the front of the store to check out.  The lines were HUGE!  I checked out while Aaron ordered the kids some food from McDonald's inside the store.  I guess most people don't normally order huge amounts of hamburgers at one time so we had to wait awhile before the food was ready to go.  We were so done and ready to get back to the hotel!!  We medicated Sarah and Matthew with cold medicine and ibuprofen and put everyone to bed after they ate dinner.  The hotel we stayed at offered a complimentary shuttle to the train station, but you had to call to reserve it beforehand.  So Aaron called and reserved the shuttle for the next morning to take us to the train station so we could get into the city.  We woke up the next morning, quickly ate breakfast and got ready then went down to catch our shuttle to the train station.  We waited, and waited, and waited, but no shuttle showed up.  Aaron checked the status with the front desk and they called about it and then said it was still coming, however, it never showed up.  The front desk never apologized they just said to take the bus over to the train station--ugh not a good start to our day.  Anyway, we did catch the bus and rode it over to the train station.  Aaron bought our subway tickets and here we are waiting for our subway train to come:

Let me just add that Aaron absolutely did not want to stop by New York City on this trip, but he gave in to my wants and decided to humor me.  So when all the craziness happened before we even got into New York City he wasn't very excited about it.  However, our day did get a lot better.  We rode the subway over to the 9-11 Memorial/Museum.  Despite the shuttle troubles we still did make it there on time fur our reserved tickets.  Here we are walking to the entrance:

It was pretty interesting.  We started off by watching a movie about the events of that day and then worked our way into the museum.  It was pretty surreal seeing all the pictures of that day.  Matthew was only 5 weeks old.  I first heard about the plane crashing into the towers as I took Aaron to school that morning.  Here's the flag that was raised at Ground Zero on 9/11.

It was interesting to see the kids reactions to the pictures and events.

Here's one of the first responders fire truck that got crushed when the building collapsed:

Here's the last remaining support that was the final piece to take down after the whole cleanup was completed:

Many people decorated that support with pictures of lost loved ones, first responders, etc.  It was a somber visit.

They still had the buildings footings in place so you knew that you were walking right where the buildings used to stand:

Here's what the skyline used to look like and what it looks like now:

The hardest part of that visit was the final area we saw.  It did not allow any photography so we don't have pictures, but I will remember it.  They had all the names of those that died that day.  They interviewed their closest friends/family and had them tell what that individual was like.  It was heartbreaking.  I can't imagine having such a horrible thing happen to a loved one so unexpectedly.  They also had a big display of all the missing posters of people no one could find.  It was good for us to see and be reminded of how fragile life can be.

After seeing everything inside we went outside to see the memorial/tribute fountains.

They did replace the Twin Towers with a building called the One World Trade Center or Freedom Tower which is the tallest skyscraper in New York.

After visiting the 9-11 Memorial we walked over to see Trinity Church.  It's an Episcopal church in lower Manhattan.

We first walked through the graveyard/cemetary around the outside of the church.  It was interesting to see the old dates on the gravestones.

We did go inside and it was beautiful.  The kids were a bit weirded out by going inside a church that is a different religion that us, but I just told them to look at the beautiful building and architecture and to appreciate that.  It was a beautiful building!

It was hot and muggy so we did stop and sit on a bench for a minute to let everyone get a drink.

Next we moved on to Wall Street.  You can see that we are standing on Wall Street:

We stopped by and got a few pictures with the infamous Raging Bull sculpture.

You were supposed to have good luck if you rubbed the horns.  Everyone made sure they did:

In one guidebook we had said it was believed you also got good luck if you rubbed the bull's nether regions, too.  Needing all the good luck we could get and Aaron is also trying to be funny he did it.  Sarah didn't have any idea what was going on so she just copied Aaron--haha!

Hoping for some more good luck--haha!

Here's the actual New York Stock Exchange:

We also passed by the New York Federal Hall building where the Bill of Rights was written:

After that we headed for the subway again.  Here we are waiting for our train:

Sarah and Matthew still didn't feel the best, but we made sure to keep them medicated with ibuprofen and cold medicine.  While we were in New York we mostly walked and walked and walked.  It was funny because we only had about a 20 minute subway ride, but all the kids fell asleep after the first few minutes of boarding--haha!  Daniel was OUT as you can see:

Here's Noah right as the train started to move:

Here's Noah and Sarah about 5 minutes later on the train:

Josh and Matthew fell asleep, too:

It was a shame to have to wake them when it was time to get off, but we had things to see!

We did want to experience some famous New York Pizza so that's what we did for lunch.  The only bad thing is they didn't have any seats just counter space.  We all ate lunch standing up:

It was good pizza, though:

We then moved on to visit Central Park.

It was pretty crowded.  It was nice that everyone was enjoying their Sunday afternoon:

We then moved on to visit Radio City Music Hall.

We then moved on to Rockefeller Center.  Thankfully, they had public bathrooms we were able to use.  We then wandered and looked around.  It was a beautiful area.

We even walked outside to visit the famous Prometheus Statue:

While we were wandering around we got to watch a couple guys working on a sand sculpture.

It was pretty cool:

We then walked down 5th Avenue.  We saw all kinds of stores.  The kids didn't understand the significance of 5th Avenue, but at least they can say they walked down it--haha!

When getting off the Subway it was awesome to walk up the stairs and see the temple.  The Angel Moroni was the first thing we saw:

We walked over to take a look.  Around the temple they had beehive logos in the cement:

The Manhattan Temple:

It was pretty cool because the temple president came out and spoke with us for about 30 minutes.  He was a pretty cool guy.

We got to visit the Empire State Building, too.  We didn't go to the top since it would have been close to $300 for our family to do so, so we just walked around it.

We did go inside to check it out, too:

We then moved on and walked down Broadway for a few blocks:

We also visited the New York Library.

By this time we were all getting a bit worn out.  We stopped just to rest for a few minutes.  Sarah and Matthew still didn't feel the greatest, but they were troopers.

We were also able to see the Flat Iron Building, too:

We then stopped by Times Square.  It was pretty crazy there.

The kids thought it was cool to see where they dropped the New Years Ball, too:

Working our way back to our bus we did stop by Carlos' Bakeshop in New York.  We did walk inside, but there was a HUGE line so we just took a picture to document that we were there:

We then got to the bus station to ride the bus back to our hotel.  Everyone was out like a light.

I wasn't because those bus drivers are crazy!!  It made me nervous watching our bus driver maneuver through traffic!

It was an amazing day in New York.  The kids were all troopers and we were able to see some pretty amazing things.  It was a great day despite the rough beginning!  Josh was extra tough because he still went and ran his 3 miles to keep up his Cross Country schedule after we got back to the hotel.