A Day in Manhattan

Where we live we are about 40 miles west of New York City.  A few weeks ago, we made our first venture into Manhattan. 

Cody had actually been into the city a couple times for work and to go to the temple.  We are in the Manhattan Temple district, which we are finding to be a little bit tricky.   

In Hong Kong, all we had to do is take a couple trains and a short walk, and in about 45 minutes we were at the temple.  And the train was cheap—like probably a dollar per person.  To get to the Manhattan temple, we can either take the train or drive in.  The train is $10 a person each way ($40 for both of us round trip), and driving costs about $15 in tolls and another $20 for parking (if you go early and get a discounted rate like we did).  Also, driving can take one to one and a half hours, depending on traffic.  Long story short, a temple trip is much more expensive and time consuming than we are use to.  I know there are many, many people in the world that have it worse than us, but this is our new reality, and we are still in the process of figuring out how to make it work for us. 

 

We decided to make a day of it for my first time.  Cody had gone by himself a few weeks before, so it was my turn.  He took the kids to Central Park (a short walk from the temple) while I did a session.  I met up with them after for lunch at one of the little cafes within the park. 

  

Then we headed out to explore a little bit.  We stopped at FAO Schwarz, thinking that would be a fun place to take the kids. 

 

I’ll admit, we had it in our heads that this store was going to be some dazzling place like that really cool toy store in Home Alone.  It really wasn’t.  It was just a large toy store with a few hands-on activities.  Still fun, but not as neat as we were expecting. 

 

We hit the streets again, wandering around to some of the big landmarks.  5th Avenue felt real comfortable to us as it reminded us of Central.  Then we spotted The Peninsula and we really felt at home.  Pretty sure it was only us and the Chinese stopping to take a picture of the building. 

The Rockefeller Center was the next big landmark we came across. 

 

Then NBC Studios and Radio City Music Hall. 

  

Lastly, we stopped by Times Square, which was pretty anticlimactic. 

 

After walking all afternoon, we still had to get back to our car.  Apparently our city legs are already disappearing; we all had tired legs and couldn’t do the walk back.  We opted to take the subway.  My goodness, the NYC subway is a dump!  I knew Hong Kong’s subway was awesome, but I didn’t realize just how nice it is until using the NYC one.  Not only is it physically muuuuch nicer, but it is also so much easier to get tickets and to navigate.

Though we didn’t actually do anything, we felt our little walking tour was a pretty good introduction to the city.  We’ll be back for some more fun eventually!  After being back in a big city, Cody and I agreed we were pretty happy we did not live in a big city anymore.  We’re kind of liking our nice, quiet community in the suburbs!