Suddenly I See: New York Trip- October 2016

In October we made the trek to New York to visit my cousin Matt. We hadn't been in a few years and he is moving back to CA this year so we wanted to make sure to go and see him before he moved.

It was a bit of a whirlwind trip. We took the Redeye. Ellie did great, I did okay. Rodger did great ;). There was a lot of turbulence. I was so happy when we landed at JFK.

Matt picked us up from the airport and took us back to his apartment by the Flatiron Building. There is nothing like driving into Manhattan at sunrise. It is a beautiful city and seeing all of the bridges and buildings took my breath away. It was the first time of many during this trip that I said to Matt "How can you leave this?"

After resting for awhile Matt took us to have ramen (my first time and Ellie's). We loved it! After, we went to Chinatown and wondered around and then took the subway over to the Stanton Island Ferry. We later had dinner by Matt's apartment.

We were all excited for Friday because my Mom and Aunt Peggy were coming in on the train from Boston. When we woke up it was pouring and pretty much continued to rain all day, which did put a "damper" on things but we made the best of it. We had breakfast on the Upper West Side by Central Park and then pretty much just ducked in and out of places in order to stay dry. We went to the mall at Columbus Circle and a few other places. Later, Matt made us a wonderful dinner and his friends came over.

Saturday, we headed over to Grand Central Station and then to Rockefeller Center (my favorite) and then back to Central Park so that we could actually walk around since we had pretty much been rained out the day before. Central Park is beautiful. I could walk around there forever. We went to the Strawberry Fields Memorial and then to the Dakota (where Bono lives) for my aunt.

We later went to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Rodger and I had seen the Memorial before but the museum wasn't finished the last time we were in NYC. The museum was remarkable but it was a bit of a bust for Rodger, Ellie, and I as Ellie just wasn't having it. She wanted to crawl everywhere and was pretty crabby. I don't blame her. She really hadn't had a decent nap in two days, poor thing. So the Long family pretty much sat on the sidelines of the museum. We will have to take Ellie back when she is older. It certainly looks like something worth seeing. Even the brief look I got was moving.

Matt took us to "The Little Owl" which was this amazing, little restaurant inside the exterior of the Friends apartment building. It was such a good dinner! I still think about how good it was. Ellie slept through the whole thing, holding on to a stick that she had found. After dinner we took the walk back to Matt's apartment and saw Washington Park.

Rodger and I had to get to Shake Shack and took another trip to Eataly, two of our favorites. Everyone loved the shakes!

We were leaving Sunday afternoon so we got up early and walked to the Highline, which we love. We walked through Chelsea and other neighborhoods. It was such a beautiful morning!

We had dinner at "The Artichoke", a pizza place we had gone to last time as well and then back to the apartment to get ready for our flight home.

The flight home was longer (especially after we sat on the tarmac for like an hour) but much, much smoother. Ellie had a great time staring out the window.

It was a quick, jam-packed trip but we had a great time (mostly anyway, Ellie and I did have one subway meltdown). Matt is a wonderful host and it was such a great experience to have with my mom and family to be together exploring NYC.

Here are all the pictures from the trip.