Category: Birthday

We got up this morning with the idea of using another one of our City Pass tickets to take a boat ride out to the Statue of Liberty and then over to Ellis Island. Lucky for us we were the only people with that idea, so we were able to just hop right on the boat and see everything. Just kidding there was like a 3 hour wait. So we waited in about the longest line I have ever seen to hop on the ferry over to lady liberty.

Once we finally got on the ferry over to Liberty island it was a nice ride. We decided to stay below instead of being out in the sun on the upper deck. We had just about enough sun while waiting for the ferry.

This french chick was much larger than she looks. I was surprised.

In the picture below it looks like she is about to give that cloud some freedom.

Long story short we walked around the statue a lot, took a lot of pictures, and were basically exhausted. We skipped Ellis Island, we will see it when we go back for Jennie’s 60th birthday.

Once back in the city we had lunch and then headed back down to ground zero. We took a few more pictures and visited the 9/11 memorial center. I also saw Steve Nash walking down the street with his kids.

Our hotel was about a block from Wooster St. Social Club, which is the tattoo studio for the TLC show New York Ink.

We walked down to it, but then chickened out about going inside. Jennie wanted to get a pretty sweet UK tattoo, but I wouldn’t let her.

The next day was our final day in NYC.

We woke up very early this morning to make our way down to Times Square to be one of the 100s of annoying people trying to get on TV during the taping of Good Morning America. Once we got down there we were greeted by a couple GMA interns who informed us that the show was taping in Central Park this morning as part of their summer concert series. They gave us their last couple VIP bracelets that would allow us to get to the front of the concert and bypass security. I guess the word had already spread of our Time Square billboard stardom (CALLBACK!!!)

Once we got to Central Park, we found the concert and walked right up to the front.

We stood around for a bit until the anchors got there and started to do their thing.

I will have to admit it was a lot of fun just watching how the whole show worked behind the scenes. It seems like a ton of work to throw that together every morning. George Snuffleupagus did a segment in which we were right behind him.

So that was our moment to shine!

Oh yeah, some country girl played some country music at some point.

After the concert we decided to head over to Rockefeller Center and head up to the Top of the Rock. It was a lot of fun and some great views of the city.

Unlike the Empire State Building, this outdoor observation deck had some glass all the way around it. So it also made for some great photo ops.

After our fun on the Top of the Rock we got some tickets to the NBC studio tour. This allowed us to see the SNL stage as well as where they tape Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. They didn’t let us take any pictures, but it was awesome to see those sets. It was pretty awesome though, I did get my picture with Matt Lauer of the Today Show. All those TV guys are shorter and flatter in real life.

We wanted to squeeze one more thing in before we called it a night. It started raining pretty bad so we thought maybe a museum might be in order. So we head to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). With all the rain and the fact it was free on Fridays, we weren’t the only ones going there. It was very close quarters, but we enjoyed seeing the art.

Tomorrow we check out some huge french lady.

Today this was Jennie’s actual birthday, so we had some serious celebrating to do (or walking…I forgot which we ended up doing). Last night before bed we decided to get the NY CityPass. If you are going to NY and are going to spend some time and see the sites I would suggest getting it. Our first stop was the Empire State Building.

The lines weren’t long and it seemed like we made it through pretty quickly. We had great views of the city from all angles.

Our tour guide, a cab driver from the city, told us about everything we were seeing. He was pretty small and actually fit inside a small plastic phone looking thing. Jennie is holding him up to her ear below.

The next stop on our trip was Times Square. Want to know why it was called Times Square? Me too.

We were heading to Times Square to hit up the TKTS ticket booth for some discount Broadway tickets. We had hoped to see Wicked, but that wasn’t happening. The only tickets for that show were about 250 bucks each. So we ended up getting tickets to Sister Act.

We also had the chance to get our names, faces, torsos and what not in lights. If you bought something at American Eagle they would take your picture and throw it up on their huge screen in Times Square. So Jennie got a couple discount t-shirts and we got our picture taken. After signing a couple autographs we moved on.

After some rest back at the hotel it was time to head to our Broadway show. See it even says it on the sign, BROADWAY.

The show was good. I think we both were expecting some of the songs from the movie, but it was all new music. Still very fun to watch. After the show we got some pizza from one of the pizza places they featured on last season’s celebrity apprentice.

After the pizza I answered a couple questions from a random teacher on the streets. While doing that a cab came by and picked us up. We headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

It was the greatest birthday Jennie has ever had ever. Tomorrow we make our national television debut.

For Jennie’s 30th birthday I surprised her with a trip to NYC. Let’s just say she was surprised, maybe not in a good way, but I was determined to make her love NYC just as much as I do.

We headed out on Wednesday morning about 10.

We got to the airport and scanned the credit card to check in, it asked if we wanted to upgrade to first class,  it wasn’t that expensive, so we did it. It’s vacation!

Then we enjoyed a little breakfast, hopped on the plane and headed to NYC.

The flight there was uneventful and no one famous (other than us) was in first. Flights that short, the upgrade to first probably isn’t worth it. I am sure longer flights are more expensive though.

We took a cab from the airport to our hotel, the Sheraton Tribeca. Something I was wondering was what TriBeCa stood for. Anyone here know? Anyone? It stands for “Triangle below Canal Street”.

We rested for a bit then took a walk down to the WTC site. The new tower is big and almost looks complete. The memorial is set to open this Sept. You couldn’t see much of it, but it does look like it will be very nice.

From there we walked on down to a dock area and took a look at the Statue of Liberty.

From there we walked on down to Bowling Green park which is in the financial district.

The north end of the park has the famous Charging Bull sculpture.

That was it for day 1, we did quite a bit of touristy stuff for just getting in the city about 2 pm.