NYC, day 3

We started our day off fueling up for more walking and exploring.

I won’t lie.  It took a bit to get them out of bed.

We took a taxi to The World Trade Center Memorial.  It was a sobering sight.  All the names were overwhelming.

This is Freedom Tower…a building they built nearby the location of the memorial.

Then, we walked over to St. Paul’s Church that is filled with memorabilia from 9/11.  All of it was overwhelming.

We walked over to Wall Street and saw the Stock Exchange and the location where George Washington gave his inauguration speech.

And of course, we needed to refuel at this point.

Then, we walked over to the Statue of Liberty area.  We didn’t take the ferry out to the statue, but being in this area was enough.

While we were waiting on Josh to figure out where to get our subway card, we snapped a couple of pictures.

I asked these nice firemen if Mack could get his picture taken with them.  They were so nice and let him get inside and wear a Fireman’s hat!  These guys looked like kids to me.  It is crazy to think that they might have been young teenagers when 9/11 happened.

After this we were ready for our subway experience.  Kids loved it.  And now that we know, next time we go back to NYC, we can broaden our exploration and check out other parts that we couldn’t walk to and/or didn’t want to drive to in a taxi.

The man in the bottom right picture was telling Josh about the subway.  He is a carriage driver in Central Park.  He was also in the South Tower on 9/11 when the planes hit. Josh was listening to his stories while at the same time having moustache-envy.

We went to Columbus Circle next and did some shopping…after a pretzel on the street corner.  At this point breakfast and the donuts were no longer providing fuel, and yet we couldn’t find anywhere we wanted to eat.  As it turns out, even though we were all starving, the waiting was well worth it.

We shopped some more, went by Rockefeller Center again and stopped in a bakery before heading back to the hotel.  We had a super early flight, so we were getting in the taxi at 5am Thursday morning!  Yikes.

Can you tell we were pooped?

Thankfully, we had an amazing trip and enjoyed every minute of it! And at the same time, we were super happy to see baggage claim and get in the car to come HOME.

Til next time, New York!