New York City, 9/23/07

Holy cow - I'm actually going to start on a New York post! Saturday we arrived in the evening and after checking into the hotel we walked up 5th avenue forever just to take in the sights. We walked on over to Times Square and got a bite to eat. It was mostly uneventful.

Sunday we picked up our tickets for a tour on the double decker buses all around the city. We took the "Uptown Tour" which is pretty well self-explanatory. We drove around uptown. After the bus tour we walked on over to the Manhattan Temple and stake center to attend Sacrament meeting. It was quite interesting to walk around the corner and all of a sudden - it was right there like it came out of nowhere. We walked inside and went up the elevator and walked out into Utah. It totally was laid out like any other stake center - you just had to take an elevator to get there. I forgot my temple recommend (idiot!) so we weren't able to attend a temple session. One of my greatest regrets...

After Sacrament meeting we got back on the bus and took the "Downtown Tour." Each tour was 2 to 2.5 hours long and it was great to be able to see so many sights and have the buildings pointed out to us. We managed to get a pretty good tour guide for this tour and he told us that he would be doing a "Night Tour" later on that evening. The Night Tour took us into Brooklyn and we decided to try and catch his later tour since he was from Brooklyn and we figured he'd have some good insider information to give us. Unfortunately, it also covered much of the Downtown Loop so we got a bit of a repeat of all of that stuff. Still, he did a nice job with Brooklyn. Being on a moving bus at night wasn't very conducive to great photographs, but the skyline was beautiful. Tours ended up taking up most of our day, but it seemed like one of the more Sabbath appropriate options we had and we felt pretty prepared for Monday.

These are not the best pictures that we took, nor are they pictures of the most interesting things we saw. They are merely pictures were at least decent, that might possibly be of interest to you, the reader, and that I might have a comment or two to say regarding. Remember, when I am commenting on a picture, I always write below it.

Empire State building behind one of the many beautiful churches around the city.

Looking straight up the Empire State Building. It's hard to even realize where you are because you can't see the top of it.

Tiles decorated and put on a fence honoring the victims of 9-11.

I'm pretty sure this is a statue of the men who built Rockefeller Center. It was actually built on a truck - so it could move around the city.

Trinity Church - SO pretty, especially the neat cemetary on it's grounds.

Manhattan Bridge

I can't remember the name of this building, but apparently in a Superman movie Christoper Reves flies right up this building. Is that interesting, I'm not sure. :)

This is a view from our hotel room on the 10th floor. When we looked out the window we could see this playground on the roof of our hotel. That seems impossible how I explained it- the building was not just one solid rectangle with rooms on every floor. The first floor had the check-in counter, conference rooms, a small cafe, etc. The 3rd floor had a fitness room, the 4th had 2 indoor pools, the 6th was all offices, 8th-13th floors were rooms, and I didn't mention the others because I'm unsure what they were used for. Anyway, the roof ended in the center of the building right over the 4th floor pool. That means that all the rooms above the 4th floor could look onto that roof. SO, I'm not sure what floor the playground roof was at, but it was at or below the 10th. Trust me.

The view just above the playground.

Here's the Central Library at night (Ghostbusters anyone?)

Here's the best we could do with a nighttime skyline from Brooklyn.

The sewers were steaming all over the place. It was so hilariously weird.

Rockefeller Center - no Christmas tree yet and we just BARELY missed the ice skating. I belive they were starting that October 6th. THAT would've been fun.

Here was a window shot of FAO Schwartz. They closed earlier that night than we expected. We went back Tuesday just to realized that we missed it again. FINALLY on Friday we managed to show up when it was still open. You would think that I could read the sign and remember what time they closed for crying out loud. I really enjoyed that place. I think we have another picture or two that I'll comment on for the Friday post.

I hope that was at least a decent start. To be continued...