Thanksgiving 2012

A few days before Thanksgiving, Bill got called out to fly to New York City. I couldn't let him eat turkey by himself, so I flew up to New York on Thanksgiving Day to join him. Here are some pictures as we approached New York LaGuardia airport.

 The farthest stadium in the picture is CitiField, home of the NY Mets.  The closest one is, I think, Shea Stadium, which is currently not used by any NY pro team.

 Thanksgiving evening dinner, in the sports bar at the Marriott.  Butternut squash soup, turkey, dressing, gravy, sweet potatoes, carrots, corn and peas followed by pumpkin pie. The only thing missing was cranberries.  The pie was so good I got a second piece to have for breakfast!

On Friday I got the hotel shuttle to LaGuardia (just over a freeway), then caught an Airporter bus into Manhattan to the Port Authority.  There I took the subway to the Museum of Natural History and Central Park.

 Here is the automated metro card machine, which you have to use to get a metro card, which lets you on the subway. With the help of a friendly guy at the machine next to me, I managed to buy a card and ride the subway from Port Authority to the Museum of Natural History on the west side of Central Park.

 

 The Christmas Tree at the Museum.

 

 The T-Rex and Brontosaurus skeletons on display in the main lobby of the Museum.

The weather was gorgeous, and I took some time to walk through part of Central Park.  Truly, there are some parts of the park that you feel like you are really in the woods, no buildings in sight.

My New York City pretzel, bought from a street vendor just on the edge of the park.

 On my second full day in NYC, the weather turned cold.  I had already booked a Hop On-Hop Off tour bus that advertised floor heating and a clear cover on the top of the double decker when the weather was bad. They lied, no floor heating, no top cover, I froze my nose off. It was windy, I could see snow flurries coming down, and I huddled inside my long sleeve shirt, sweather, long coat, gloves, scarf, earmuffs and gamely tried to look at all the sights as we drove by.  I did get off at the 9/11 site and saw the new Freedom Towers going up.

 I also visited the wax museum, and got a picture with Lucy.

 Back out on the street, I had to get pictures of my buds Elmo, Grover and Mickey

 to show to the grandkids.

 Macy's, where I would have spent most of the day instead of on the cold tour bus, if I hadn't already paid for the tour. And if you know how much I really dislike shopping, then you can figure out how cold it for me to even consider spending a day in a department store.

 Here are a few scenes of New York, the subway train, a musical group playing on the lower level of the Port Authority, and the traffic.  When I got up there, I told Bill how much fun I thought it would be to live in New York for a year, just to really experience it.  When I left, I had decided that I don't need to ever come back to New York!