Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

On Thanksgiving day, we went to the Macy's Parade. We have both watched the parade every year since we were kids and have both wanted to go and see it in person. So since we are in New York and the parade is in New York, we said "Yay, let's go see the parade!"

We got up super early, but not as early as we had originally planned. Brian likes to turn the alarm off in the mornings and go back to sleep before I am woken up by it. So we woke up at 6:00 am instead of 5:00 am. But it still worked out. We were able to make it to the parade route area in good time. The subways weren't crowded at all really, so I think sleeping in the extra hour was good. We wandered around a little to try and find the best spot, and ended up on the west side of Columbus Circle. The parade actually went down the east side, but we had a clear view of the balloons.

This is a picture near where we were standing. The day was overcast and chilly, but I was expecting it to be much colder. I thought these trees with the Christmas lights on them were pretty.

Once we found our spot we had about an hour and a half to wait for the parade to start and reach us. Here we are all smiley, and excited.

Finally, we heard the people across the street start cheering and clapping and the yellow Macy's stars came into view. We were so excited!

We barely could hear the bands playing, but we could hear the drums and we could see the feathers on the tops of their hats. Our view of the street wasn't spectacular, but it was good enough. We were happy with our spot.

The balloons were awesome! We love Snoopy.

We're also big fans of Kermit.

There were people crowded on every balcony and rooftop near the parade route. It looks like they could reach out and touch the balloons! Okay, so they probably weren't that close, but I bet they got some great up close shots as the balloons floated past. There were a lot of people there!

About halfway through the parade, I looked over at Brian and he had put on more layers! He was shivering by the time the parade ended. I didn't think it was that bad, but I had been busy taking pictures of everything.

The balloons would reach about this point and then stop for a few minutes. The people holding onto the strings were rearranging their positions to turn the corner, and it would cause the balloons to bounce up and down.

At this point, Brian thought the parade would just keep going, and going... :)

I almost missed getting a picture of Santa because the batteries died in our camera.

As soon as we saw these balloons we started to head toward the subway station. We wanted to get there as soon as we could ahead of the crowds. We did a good job getting onto the subway platform quickly, but each train that would stop was packed completely full from the previous stops on the parade route. We had to wait for three trains to pass before we managed to squeeze onto a car. I thought we barely fit, but then five more people pushed on behind us. Lets just say, I was getting very familiar with the guy in front of me, and Brian had a little kid hugging his leg from behind. Luckily, we only had to ride two stops like that, and then we escaped the craziness. We changed to the train that takes us home at the Times Square stop and it was a lot less crowded. As we were walking through the terminal to change trains, we passed by a guy that was playing "Hava Nagila" on an electric keyboard and in front of him he had a plastic toy doll set up on the floor that was belly dancing to the music. We hadn't seen that one before! You never know what you'll find in New York, especially in the subway terminals.

We made it home around noon and sat down to enjoy some turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. Since I didn't bring much cookware with us, and we haven't had a chance to buy any more yet, we cheated and bought our food from the Boston Market down the street. It was really good, but we both missed the home cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Overall, I think our first Thanksgiving on our own was a success!