New York City 9/24

I feel another boring post coming along here. We had another bus tour to go on Monday morning. This one was into Brooklyn. It turned out to be pretty interesting but there weren't many pictures/sights that would've been recognized by the viewing audience here so I'm not including any pictures of Brooklyn. We got back on the Downtown tour bus in order to meet up with the bus to take us to Brooklyn so we got to repeat a little of the downtown sights.

Here's the Flatiron building. It's where Peter Parker works.
This was some amusing scaffolding in the fasion district - the entire block is geared for women so it was funny to see that they even tried to make the construction look pretty.

We took a walk to find a museum at Ground Zero. It was nothing like I had expected it to be. I thought that they had some sort of monument or memorial for the victims of 9-11. We walked around the entire area and found nothing for the victims. It was still all under construction.

We DID find a memorial for the firefighters which was nice.

I especially liked seeing the faces of all those who had sacrificed their lives in the performance of duty. It made the sacrifice seem a little more real for some reason.


Here are some shots of Trinity church which we loved.







This big tree root is on display outside of Trinity Church. It is from a tree that used to stand outside nearby St. Paul's Chapel. Apparently when the twin towers fell the Chapel was used as a place of refuge for the recovery workers. It is right there by the twin towers site but came through without even a broken window. Church history declares it was spared by a miracle sycamore on the northwest corner of the property that was hit by debris. The root of that tree was bronzed and is on display at Trinity church now.

Derek near Wall Street.

This one's for you Joe.

An illustration of the dangers of standing up while riding in the double decker tour buses. Check out how low those traffic lights are.

Posing in front of the Brooklyn Bridge.

There were a few boats at the South Street Seaport that we were able to tour.

Satelite dish on the side of this historic 100 year old boat. Maybe there would've been less mutiny back in the day if the sailors could kick back and watch some direct TV. Who's watching it now, I'd like to know?

Brooklyn Bridge tower with gothic arches.

Now, you've gotta love Chinatown. Frankly, I wasn't interested in buying any junk to clutter up my house with, though our tour guide gave us some helpful tips on bartering (act insane). When Derek and I went to scope out Chinatown and I got a wiff of the AWFUL smells, it became my #1 objective to get the heck outta there. If these next few pictures don't at least SORT OF gross you out, you served a mission in a foreign country. Either that or you've had food poisoning multiple times in your lifetime.

Little Italy is now basically one street. They were having a festival that week - the feast of San Gennaro. Little Italy wasn't much either, but we DID get a big kick out of these signs.

Here a cop was directing traffic and this trucker started arguing with her about how he should've been able to go. It was hilarious because she was just arguing back while traffic was going on around them.

We ended the day with a meal at Stromboli's pizza. This is a chicken and lettuce pizza. One of my favorite meals while in New York.

Derek and I were trying to figure out what in the world we did after dinner on Monday. It turns out, not much. We tried to stop back by FAO Schwartz just to find it closed for the second time, then tried to get an internet signal in Central Park with not much luck. We were trying to get tickets for either the Daily Show or Colbert Report or something. Unfortunately, you have to check their website and then they email you and you verify it and we didn't have internet connection long enough to make it work ever. Oh well!

New York Pictures

You guys are cracking me up! Those are NOT our best pictures. The ones on the header ARE my favorites though. Those were all pictures that we took. You can ooh and aaah over those all you want to. :)

Second Thoughts

zzzzzz..... That was a real Snoozer! Instead of posting each day of New York seperately, I'm going to go ahead and write one about the highlights. I wrote that last post pretty late last night and I was bored this morning reading it. Stay tuned for a better post about NYC.

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...

Home Improvements

I know I'm disappointing all of you by not posting about New York City. I'll get there. In the meantime, this is what has been taking up all of this week's attention. Our kitchen floor went from this:








To this:








They also retiled our bathrooms which were previously carpeted. Yes, I'm thrilled. No, the tape wasn't permanent.

Vaseline Remedy

So, I have a carpet cleaner. I first used some water and Dawn and the handheld attachment on the carpet cleaner that has suction on it. I thought that would be a good idea - scrub with Dawn and have the residue sucked out at the same time. Then I used the normal carpet cleaning solution and cleaned over the area continually for about 10 minutes. Next day... totally oily carpet. Cool...

Turns out, when you put a paper bag on the carpet and then use a warm iron on top of it, the brown paper bag soaks up the oils. I used 6 brown paper bags and was STILL getting Vaseline out of the carpet. It is not out completely - I just got sick of ironing. I'll go at it again later.

Not My Favorite Part of the Day

Does anyone know how to get Vaseline out of carpet?