Family, Food and Ferries

Brian's brother Sean and his wife Andrea have been visiting us this last week. They flew in on the evening of May 3rd and have been touring the city each day since. Friday afternoon was the first opportunity that we were able to go and do stuff with them. We all met at Brian's office around 4:30 and he took us up and showed us around the PC Mag labs.

After that we walked to Madison Square park which is near the Flatiron building to show them those sights. You can pretty much see the Empire State building from anywhere in the city, but usually it's just the top portion. We can even see it from our neighborhood in Queens! There is an excellent view of it from Madison Square park so I snapped a picture. I never get tired of looking at it. If I'm out and about at night, I always look for it to see what colors it is lit up. It's different every night.

We headed down to Greenwich Village next and on the way passed a couple of churches which were very cool looking. I got so distracted by the flowers around them though that I didn't get pictures of the actual buildings. whoops!

Washington Square park is located in Greenwich Village. It has been on our list of "Sights to See" so we are glad we got to go with Sean and Andrea. We got to see the Washington Square Arch.

The square is located near New York University so there are lots of students in the area. We were "lucky" enough to be there when they were having an underwear party. Yikes! They don't have many underwear parties at BYU-I so I can say that it was my first (and hopefully last) one.

More pretty flowers.

We continued to meander through the streets of Greenwich Village. It is a neat area with a lot of character. We saw random chess shops, a wide variety of food, lots of bars and eclectic people. We ended up eating at John's Pizzeria on Bleeker Street, which we found out from Andrea's uncle is Jack Black's favorite pizza place. It was a little place, not fancy at all. The booths were covered with people's initials that they had scratched into the wood. It looks like they just stain over it every so often, and then the carvings start over. Very cool.

It was super delicious. I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it! We split a plain pie (always call your pizza a pie in New York) with tomatoes roasted in olive oil. It. Was. Amazing.

While we were in Washington Square park, Sean ran down a lady in a tour group who was holding a Magnolia Bakery Bag. We found out it was also on Bleeker Street, so after pizza we went to find it. It was a cute little corner shop that smelled amazing inside. The air smelled of buttery, sugary goodness.

Brian chose a lemon square and I got a small caramel pecan cheesecake. They tasted really good. It was the most incredible dessert that I had ever tasted. We ate them in a small park that is kitty-corner to the bakery. The garbage cans were heaping full with bakery boxes and bags. Apparently that is THE spot to enjoy your Magnolia Bakery fare.

We walked back down Bleeker Street to get to the subway station, which took us to our next stop...Battery Park. This is where the Staten Island Ferry runs (for free!) between the southern tip of Manhattan and Staten Island.

The ferry we rode on over to Staten Island didn't have any top decks to go on, but we were able to go to the rear of the boat that had an open area. The back ended up being the front as we were heading towards the island. The wind was crazy and it was freezing cold. I was worried because I have a pretty bad cold and didn't want to get worse, but the next day I ended up feeling the best I had all week. Maybe it was the cold sea air that helped...who knows. Anyways, we got to enjoy the company of a air guitarist rocking out the whole way over. From the looks of it I think he might have been a professional, or at least very passionate about his air guitaring skills.

You can see a tiny Statue of Liberty to the left of Brian.

We changed ferries on the way back to one that looked like this. We were able to go up on the top deck and see some spectacular views of the city at night. It was quite the romantic ride, except for the billowing black smoke blowing over the side of the ferry. We would have changed sides, but the view wasn't as good on the opposite side.

The Statue of Liberty was all lit up and gorgeous.

Here is a view of the city as we were nearing Manhattan. It doesn't show it in this picture, but the new World Trade Center Memorial building was all lit up with red, white and blue lights. It was an awesome sight.

At this point we were all fairly tired, especially Sean and Andrea who had been on their feet all day for the previous two days. I remember how that felt the first few months we were here and were playing tourist for nine plus hours a day. It's so fun, but exhausting! We've only been here for a little over eight months, but that seems like it was so long ago. I guess time flies when you're having fun, or working or something.