The Great Adventure - Day 16

I'll try and keep the typing in this post short to offset the 50+ photos that ended up in it!

Today we reached the East Coast!  We have now travelled coast-to-coast across America.  My beyond-wonderful friend, Christine took us on a tour of New York City, but not before she made us a really healthy and really delicious breakfast!

Soon after, we were on our way into the city.  She drove us the entire way from her place in Pennsylvania.  So nice to have both of us not driving for a change:

Our first stop was the Empire State Building.  We didn't really want to pay huge amounts to spend hours in line, so we just took some photos of the building vs. from the top of it:

She spent time researching and mapping out our entire day to make sure we saw as much of New York as possible in our 8 hours there:

 Nick and Christine:

We wandered the streets taking in tour buses, iconic buildings, and Times Square:

Even the Statues of Liberty have iPhones apparently...

We grabbed some hotdogs from a street vendor and Nick got taken for $17 for three TINY hotdogs and two water bottles.  Lesson learned.  Ask and barter first before taking the food in hand.

I have to say that one of my FAVOURITE things about New York was actually the multi-story Toys-R-Us building.  We hardly explored any of it, but what we saw was fantastic.  A life-sized, animatronic dinosaur, lego structures to the ceiling, an indoor ferris wheel, and more:

Nerds....

We also popped in the Disney Store quickly, and I admired their Tangled-themed ceilings:

We also went to the M&M store, where you could get the candies in almost any colour and even print your own designs on them!

Shortly after, we took a foot-break and sat down at a coffee shop where Nick bought me this yummy drink.  It was so nice to be with another photographer who didn't look twice as I picked it up, set it on the floor because the lighting was best there and proceeded to hang off my seat to get this shot:

We headed out back on the streets to go see where they shoot 30 Rock:

 Then we got distracted by some beautiful churches.  Sadly, the one was under construction, but it's going to be gorgeous when they're finished!

In order to save time, we skipped going to Central Park and hailed a cab to take us down to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty.  Nick and I were debating over who got to use the camera (hard to share just one camera for both photo and video when on vacation) when we passed the Brooklyn Bridge, so I just got a quick snap out the window before passing it back to him for more video:

 We got to the ferry terminal right before sunset.  Most of my Statue of Liberty photos are pretty small since I opted to just carry one wide lens around the city with me, so everything was shot with my 35mm.

The city lights started to come out as twilight transitioned into night:

Our first official New York subway experience.  A LOT nastier than our Vancouver skytrains - that's for sure!

We got back near our parking garage as the night life of the city started to pour into the streets.  Friday night in New York makes for slow going as the sidewalks get more and more jam-packed.  Within half an hour of this shot, we had to hang onto each other to not lose one another in the crowds:

And of course, a quick stop to try New York pizza.  We had to compare it to Chicago's to be well-versed.  I just had a bite as my dairy allergy was giving me a hard time this week, but Nick stepped up to the plate for us :)

Then a quick walk back to the car and into the Lincoln Tunnel to head back to PA!

As far as a blitz, 8-hour tour of New York goes, I think we did well!  We didn't get to everything on our list and "sampled" various stores and areas verses getting lost in them for hours, but now we can say we've been to the Big Apple!  We could NOT have done even half so well without our tour guide, though!  She was a life saver!