many mundane moments

It's a hell of a town

A little later than promised, but I napped too.

The shoes- I'll start here, because I know you're dying to know. I wore these- super light to carry in my backpack when needed, comfy, a lot like tennis shoes, but a little more kicky and fun, a compromise, for sure, but I felt they were my best option.

The accomodations- we have the nicest friends ever. When we decided to take them up on their offer and skip the hotel, we fully expected that we had relegated ourselves to the floor (or air mattress, at best). Imagine our surprise upon arrival when she insisted that we take their room (he was out of town for clinicals while finishing up his CRNA program). The bed was so nice! We might have to move up to a king sized bed at home, too. Plus, we loved staying with them. She was an excellent tour guide and infinitely accomodating and they have a super cute and happy baby. He liked Howie and was a great playmate, though always grabbing him.


The flip-side is that living in Manhattan while being a student and a mom who only works two days a week, they live in kind of a scary neighborhood. They weren't kidding when they said they lived in the ghetto. We learned pretty quick to spot the drug dealers. Here's a tip- they were the ones standing on the street. The weird thing about New York is that two or three streets can make a big difference. We did find some neat things to do just a few streets over from their apartment.

What we did-

Tuesday- We spent 1.5 hours on the train/subway during rush hour to make to our friends', napped on the afformentioned awesome bed until noon, found a great restaurant, took the subway to Central Park where Howie spent some time on the playground and we rode the carousel, walked around Manhattan a bit before heading back uptown and ordering in yummy gyros and watching a movie.


Wednesday- We found a beautiful park overlooking the Hudson where we wandered and let Howie loose on the playground, went to the Bronx Zoo (incredible), and then to Times Square where we fought crowds and paid way too much for a burger.


Thursday- We took the Staten Island Ferry to look at the Statue of Liberty (didn't actually go to Liberty Island, though), went to observatory level of the Empire State Building (way less romantic than the movies when it costs $16 each and you spend more time in queues and elevators than actually looking out), ate from a hot dog vendor for lunch, let Howie run around Bryant Park for awhile, then trekked 12 blocks and through Times Square again to find a post office before Matt said "enough!" and we made our way back to the aiport with 4 hours to wait for our flight.
on the ferry-

looking dorky, but it's the best one of all of us




What we learned-
It was definitely worth taking our stroller. We had thought to just take a sling or backpack, but added this at the last minute. I'm so glad we did- except for at the zoo when you have to park it for half the exhibits anyway. It was so nice to let Howie nap on the go. However, as nice as it is around suburban walking trails and malls, I don't think it was meant for manuevering Manhattan- especially when we put both backpacks in it and carried Howie instead.


-Howie is such a trooper. He did really well. I told another mom at the airport that he did better downtown than Matt and I wasn't exaggerating. Next time I'll probably drug him for the flights. He was so wired when we left that he was up until after 1AM and only slept about 2.5 hours that night. But again, such a trooper. He did amazingly well with the time difference and screwy nap and sleep schedules.

-an embarrassing one- don't kid yourself that you'll go through more than 4-5 diapers a day. I just unpacked at least 15 that we didn't use.

-We were also reminded that Matt and I have very different travel styles. I like to go out a lot and see things a lot more than he does. He's much more laid back and I think he was hoping for more rest on this trip than I let him have. I would have been happy to do some shopping, given the opportunity.

All in all, it was a great trip. We didn't do a ton and it was fairly low key, but I still feel like it was time well spent. It was an excellent test run for England this fall. I'm more excited for that than ever. Let's hope it doesn't get pushed back again.

posted by Valarie @ 11:39 AM