Weekend with Anthony

Getting back to NYC from Richmond was a bit of a headache, but I was greeted by a familiar face upon return. Anthony, a good family friend, was able to come visit us in the city for a 15th birthday present and we had a blast. It is so much fun to show people around a city which I can call my own. Knowing the ins and outs and seeing the awe on the people's faces is always a thrill.


We decided to do an overview of the entire island of Manhattan. We started by taking the subway to the south end of the island and walking the Brooklyn Bridge. Here are some shots just before the bridge. One is a distant shot of the Woolworth building and the other is a colorful fall view of the street.

Here we are headed out onto the bridge itself.


There were great views of the skyline of the city!

Then we headed down towards ground zero. There is not too much to see there other than the plans of the new buildings that they are working on. They are building five buildings with a memorial park in the middle of them...they spiral towards the park and the tallest (the freedom tower) will be the tallest building in the world for about 6 months. Here are some shots at City Hall Park-a park one block away from the site of the twin towers.

Then we made our way to Trinity Church and Wall Street. These are shots of the church from the outside and a picture looking down Wall Street.



Believe it or not we had to wait about 10 minutes to get this shot with George....you'd never know it by the expressions on these faces! The 10 minutes is a fraction of the time it would have taken to get a picture with the bull....from either side.





Then we headed down to see the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately the wait was extremely long and that wouldn't have even gotten us into the Lady so we took the free option of the Staten Island Ferry and got just as good of a view!

Here you see the statue on the left and Ellis Island on the right.

There were some great city shots from the boat as well. It was fun to see the Brooklyn Bridge from a distance after we'd been over it just a few hours before.

We then took off to Chinatown and Little Italy where we had great Italian and some killer Tiramisu. The boys kept going to Midtown where they walked all the way from the south end of Central park (which is at 59th street) through all the chaos of Time Square hitting every square and park along the way until they reached Union Square (14th street). If that isn't an overview of the city I don't know what is. A day that is fit for a teenage boy and not the young mother who bailed out after dinner for an early bed time.

Overall we had a great time and it gave Steven and I a chance to enjoy the city in which we live.