New York City

This past Thursday, my wonderful husband told me he had a surprise for me.

He told me we were going on a trip for our anniversary, but wouldn't tell me where. I just had to be ready to go by 9:30 the next morning and he told me we were flying. I was so excited! Seriously, I couldn't sleep that night!

The next morning, I found out we were flying to NEW YORK CITY! Well, to be specific, we flew to Chicago and then on to Newark, NJ, where we took the train into NYC.


We were gone approximately 36 hours, from Friday morning to late Saturday night. It was a super quick trip, but so much fun. Here are some pictures/recap of our trip.

Like I said, we flew into New Jersey and took the New Jersey Transit into Penn Station. Our plane from Chicago was delayed almost an hour, so we got to NYC later than planned. We had to walk VERY quickly to get to the New Amsterdam Theater, where we had tickets to see Mary Poppins! It was amazing, and probably my favorite thing from our trip.

My pictures from inside the theater are not so great--it was dark. But the theater was so beautiful!
Yikes...poor Brooks was trying to stretch his arm way out to get a picture of us

The detail on all the walls and ceilings was amazing
Mary Poppins ended around 10:30 or 11p.m. Since we wanted to fit as much sightseeing in as possible, we then headed to see Times Square and the Empire State Building.

This is what NYC looks like on a Friday night at almost midnight! So bright!
This was the lobby for the Empire State Building...it was beautiful.
On our way up!
I would like to mention, for the record, Brooks is NOT wearing orange suspenders. It's a backpack! (My mom thought he was wearing suspenders! haha!)
The view..it was spectacular. We were 86 (I think) stories up.
Looking up at the very top of the ESB
From there, we walked a little ways in the direction of our hotel and then took a cab the rest of the way. My feet were killing me and we were both exhausted. We got to our hotel around 12:30a.m. and realized we hadn't eaten dinner (because our plane was delayed and we had to rush to get to Mary Poppins), so we bought some easy mac from the hotel lobby, ate it, and went to sleep.

The next morning, we ate our continental breakfast at the hotel and headed to Grand Central Station. It was huge and so beautiful.

Outside of Grand Central Station
Brooks getting us subway tickets :) Proof that the backpack was not suspenders.
We took the subway to Bowling Green, where we saw Battery Park and caught a ride on the Staten Island Ferry.
Here is Battery Park
We got on the Staten Island Ferry--it passed right by the Statue of Liberty
This is what our ferry looked like
You can see the Brooklyn Bridge in the background...it was a beautiful day!
After the ferry, we hopped back on the subway and went to see Ground Zero. There was a lot of construction going on--they are building a 9/11 Memorial Site.



This is the church right across from the site. It was a refuge for the rescue workers--they slept on the pews, ate, had prayer times.
This is the super old cemetery in front of the church.

After seeing Ground Zero, we got back on the subway and headed towards Penn Station. We had a few minutes before we needed to be at the airport, so we had some gyros and did some souvenir shopping. Then we got on the NJ transit and headed back to the airport.
We flew to Charlotte, NC and then to Indianapolis. We were home around 9:30p.m. Saturday night. It was such a busy trip...but so much fun!

Here we are on our final train ride to New Jersey...we were tired!

I have to say, NYC was awesome! I definitely would like to go back sometime and spend more time there. It was a wonderful anniversary!