Grand Central, Empire State, Central Park, The Met, Little Italy, and Times Square

Today was a MUCH better day, not that yesterday was a hard one to beat haha. Even though almost everything we'd done today was something I had already done, we did it in a different way and had a lot of fun.

We started the day at Grand Central Station. I had told Stace it wasn't super exciting, but I get it is one you feel you have to see so I understood her wanting to. We go there and got a few pics and then she agreed it really isn't anything special so we left, haha. 

I found the famous parade route!!

We then decided to head over to the Empire State Building. It was way before our reserved time so we walked around looking at the souvenir shops (she likes to go to ALL of them). We also tried to find me decent walking shoes because apparently the walking ones I packed are too small so I'm wearing my regular street shoes that didn't feel they were great for walking as much as I knew we were going to be. Unfortunately, none of the shoes were cheap enough for me (I'm not spending $80 on shoes for a short vacation! No thank you!) so my street shoes were going to have to do. We ended up finding some cute little gifts for people (including a lot of back and forth from my mom and Cindy on sweaters...my mom now has 2 sweaters because she kept changing her mind haha) and then headed over to ESB. This time felt different than last time. They had a lot of fun art work and pictures and interactive things to go through, including a cool "King Kong going through the windows" exhibit. We got some good shots there and then took the elevators up to the balconies and got some really good shots there. It was a much clearer day than when I went last time so that was nice, I even got to see the Statue of Liberty from there...that was cool!

The view of the Statue of Liberty

After that we headed over to a New York pizza place...again, food was only okay, nothing exciting (which is what happened last time...their pizza might not be all it's cracked up to be after all). We then headed over to Central Park and rented some Citi Bikes and took a nice ride through the park (after having to ride in the streets to get to the park...that was very strange). I love the park. It's so pretty and if I lived in the city, I'd be there every chance I could to eat lunch and just read. The bike ride was bumpy, but nice. We didn't get to see as many statues and lakes as the last time I was there, but we covered a LOT more in one day this way (I also found out that Stace is SUPER directionally challenged haha).

Red faced - but proud of myself!

We rode around for about an hour and then docked our bikes back and headed over to The Met. I love this museum and am so glad Stace got to see it. Although I didn't have the same reaction as before, the paintings  weren't as awe inspiring as before, but they did have a new "period rooms" going on and that was pretty cool. And of course we got to see the famous window wall room that is in all the movies. Stace liked the storage room the most haha.

One of the period rooms - very beautiful

We ended up finishing the museum pretty quickly so we decided to head over to Little Italy for dinner. Now this part I hadn't done before and it's definitely worth seeing! They had such a cute decorated area to walk through, the food was FANTASTIC, and they had a fun Christmas gift shop. Stace of course had to stop by all the I heart NY stores to see things too and I had to stop at a cannoli shop to get one of those (I had never tried one and figured Little Italy was the best place to get one). I got a cannoli and Stace got an éclair and we figured we'd split them, but we didn't eat them tonight...we were WAY too full by the time we got back to our room for the night.

                                                                                           

                                                                         

After Little Italy I felt we had enough time to see Times Square, Stace wanted to see it at night and Larry and I were very adamant to avoid the city at night so we didn't get to see it that way when we came. We stopped by our room to put our treats in the fridge, and then headed out again. The one big difference between this trip is pot has very clearly been legalized this time and the city REEKS of the smell! They had edible food trucks all over Times Square too. We got to see quite a bit, but again, it's not something you can spend hours at. We did stop at the Disney Store and I got some cute Mickey and Minnie stuffed figures for the kids. We also got our pics of the street and then headed back for the night.

We've done a ton of walking today and I'm sure I'll be feeling it tomorrow, but luckily my shoes haven't been too bad. We squeezed in a lot more than we had planned, which was nice. It was a fun, busy day and I'm glad we had time to come back and get a shower in. I feel like I'll be taking a lot of showers while we're here haha. Anyways, time to figure out timing for tomorrow, it should be a REALLY fun day (everything will be new for me!).