At the end of July 2013, I took Andrew and Joey to New Jersey to visit Eric. We started off with a drive to Salt Lake, where it was about half the price to fly out. We stayed at Lindsey's house just for one night, and then Andy took us to the airport in the morning.
It was Joey's first airplane ride, and because of his allergies I wasn't sure how it would go. We did find out that because he is allergic to nuts, we get to board the plane first! That was a welcome surprise. They let us on so that we could wipe down his seat and the whole area we would be in to get rid of any residual peanuts. They also made an announcement over the intercom and asked people to not eat any nuts while on board. This totally freaked out a lady behind us when she accidentally opened a granola bar and didn't realize it had nuts. I heard her talking and worrying about it, so I turned around and reassured her that he would not perish, and that she could go ahead and enjoy the candy bar.
We were lucky enough to have a straight flight to Newark, and we almost walked right past Eric when we got there. I wasn't expecting to see him so close to where we deplaned, and he had a video camera in front of his face, so I barely recognized him. The kids were pretty impressed with the New York skyline, and were even more impressed when we got to Eric's apartment and saw the swimming pool. After taking a dip, we walked up the street to get some yogurt.
The next day, we took the train into New York City. It was quite an adventure for the boys. They were not impressed with the cleanliness or smell of the subway system, but thought it was pretty fun to ride (even though I wouldn't let them touch anything - they both wanted to stand and hold on to the rails, but you can just see the germs crawling around that place).
We took the boys straight to the Museum of Natural History. Their one goal for the day was to see "Dum Dum", from the movie "Night at the Museum". They saw most of their favorite characters, plus much, much more. One of the highlights was a show at the planetarium, voiced by Whoopie Goldberg. It was a pretty big contrast to the out-of-focus show we saw at the Museum of the Rockies one year.
We had big plans for the day, so our next stop was getting some food at the Shake Shack. They loved the food, and thought the tiny little restaurant basement where we ate was a little bit strange.
Next up was the Top of the Rock, so that we could see nearly all of Manhattan. It was a seriously rainy day, and a little windy way up there, but we could still see all of Central Park, and even all the way down to the Financial District and the Statue of Liberty. I was a little surprised that they didn't seem all that impressed with the size of New York. To me, it is completely overwhelming, but they didn't really say too much about it.
We also took a stroll around FW Schwartz, the Apple Store, Central Park, and Times Square, before grabbing some dinner and heading back to Penn Station to catch the train home.
A few days later, and after a weekend in Boston, we came back into the city and focused on Lower Manhattan. We went to see where Eric used to live, walked by the Stock Exchange, grabbed some real New York style pizza, and then headed over to Battery Park. The kids could see the Statue of Liberty much better from here. We were surprised that all throughout our week on the East Coast at the end of July, the temperature never got above 85. We were so lucky, because it could have been really miserable!
We stopped for lunch at Chipotle, and then headed north. We had tickets to go to the World Trade Center, which was really the most important thing I wanted the boys to see. Neither of them really understand the full scope of what happened that day. They have only seen pictures, but it made a huge difference to be standing there and seeing where it happened, seeing the buildings all around us, reading the thousands of names on the fountains, and seeing the footprint of those buildings. It was very important for Andrew, who was born on 9/11/01 to see what happened the day he was born.
After we were done at the Trade Center site, we caught the train back home. The boys were experts by now, and I wasn't as jumpy watching their every move to make sure I didn't lose one of them (especially Joey -- he is a little pokey). The rest of the trip was spent leisurely swimming in the pools and watching movies at night. The boys had such a great time, and can't wait to go back!
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