Shelby's Life and Whatnot

The New York Portion

Recommended: Read the Boston Portion below first!

After Boston we took the high speed train into New York. Since this was my first trip to New York (and Boston) I was very excited and was not disappointed. Our hotel in NY was much nicer, the Metropolitan. This one had a very nice room with a comfy king sized bed, and was conveniently located by a main subway stop.

As it turns out though, the subway system almost killed me. Stairs, everywhere! I never realized how inaccessible the world really is until I had a problem with accessibility myself. Many times the subway transfers sapped all my energy before I arrived at our destination. I did okay walking but the stairs really got me. It's the first time all year that I really felt the effects of my heart condition. Luckily we quickly discovered the concept of the Taxi and planned our outings to be a mix of subway and taxi that got me there and back intact.

Our first night in NY we headed to the Empire State Building. It was exciting to see this landmark in person and of course the view was incredible. I'm glad we went at night.

Other highlights of our trip included the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (a subway detour due to "police activity" in one of the stations nearly wiped me out). On Ellis Island we got to see the wall/monument/thingy of names of people who came through Ellis Island who donated money to its restoration. Kevin's relative is on there--and through a very funny family fluke actually appears twice. So we got to see "Gerrit Bakker, Gerrit Bakker" and take a picture.

We visited two museums: the Cooper Hewitt museum, a museum of design, and of course the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I got a t-shirt. We saw Central Park, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center.

We also did some shopping. We went to Kate's Paperie, the Fountain Pen Hospital, and the Strand Bookstore (8 miles of books!). I couldn't resist purchases at the paper store and the book store :).

For my birthday my mom treated us to tickets to The Lion King. This is my favorite Disney movie and I have been wanting to see the musical ever since it came out. It was fantastic! The costumes were incredible and the music was really good (I already own the soundtrack, which has some new songs that weren't in the movie). I got a t-shirt there too, and a stuffed Simba that was on sale for $3.49. Just about everyone in the theater had that stuffed Simba.

On the 4th of July we headed to Grenwich Village to visit Kevin's cousins (also relatives of the Gerrit Bakker of Ellis Island). We had a fun chat and dinner and then we headed to fireworks at Roosevelt Island. The fireworks were sponsored by Macy's and were very impressive. It's probably the best fireworks display I've ever seen. The only thing that wasn't good was the accompanying music. But other than that, the fireworks were awesome and there were even some new fireworks that I've never seen before. It was really cool to see them reflected in the UN building too.

I think that's about all we saw in New York, unless Kevin remembers something that I don't (I'd ask him but he's at the grocery store right now). My fatigue and daily 2-3 hour naps really cut into our touring both NY and Boston but overall I did pretty well and thought we were able to see a lot of what we wanted. Like I said, we'll just have to come back to see the rest of it!