New Jersey/NYC sisters vacation

Alot has happened in the two weeks since I last posted. I went on a fabulous vacation with my two sisters! It was all very last minute, I know. We originally were trying to plan a big group vacation but it didn't work out and ...... somehow we ended up with the three of us going alone to visit a cousin of ours that live in New Jersey. Kate was very sweet to let us stay at her place and be our tour guide of New York City. We had a blast! I will admit right now that (a) this will be a long post and (b) I stole some of these pictures from my sisters.

The first full day of our trip we took a bus into NYC (about an hour). We grabbed some coffee and then cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. Delish!

We did a ton of walking. We made it to Wall Street and found the stock exchange.
Near there is also a large bull. You can see that some people took pictures at the back end of the bull. Hee hee! We stuck to the front.

We found ground zero. There's lots of construction going on there. Some new towers are being built as well as a large 9-11 museum. Unfortunately that wasn't finished yet.

In Battery Park there is this huge sculpture called "The Sphere". It used to be in the plaza of the World Trade Center and was damaged but not destroyed during 9-11. It was moved to Battery Park as a temporary monument.
We had lunch in or close to little Italy at Lombardi's which says it's the first pizza place in America. Whether it was or not it was pretty darn tasty!
Everyone said that you cannot go to New York City without seeing a Broadway show. We agreed. We saw Mama Mia which was right up our alley since we were all fans of the movie. I must say that this "Sam" was a much better singer than Pierce Brosnan. Not that it would take much (sorry Pierce!).

We hit up FAO Schwartz for a little toy shopping (and I do mean little). We did see the famous piano keyboard thingy but although it was free to play on there was a line so we passed. They had a huge Lego section and some cool things built with them like Indiana Jones, The Statue of Liberty (of course), and a pirate (Captain Jack Sparrow maybe?).


The second day we spent most of the morning taking the ferry to Liberty Island and Ellis Island. We weren't able to go up inside the Statue of Liberty (you have to get tickets way in advance) but we were right there.



Ellis Island had a museum that was full of interesting things to read but not lots of photo op kinds of things. Don't let the lack of pictures here make you think we didn't like it.

In the afternoon we hit up The Top of The Rock. This is an observation deck (or three) at the top of Rockefeller Center. Because we did this we skipped going to the top of the Empire State Building but we had a great view of it along with Central Park and just most of Manhattan. We couldn't really see the Chrystler Building but that's about it.




If it was possible we did even more walking this second day in the city than we did on the first. This is the Flatiron Building. I'm not even sure what it is but I'm guessing apartments or condos. The only thing I do know is that it was in the opening of "Friends".
Our next two days were spent much less busy in staying close to "home" in New Jersey. We did a little walking here too since we were so close to the beach. We hit up the boardwalk & did a little more souvenir shopping but never actually went in the water.

I've always wanted to go to NYC and am so glad that I finally got the chance. It was also really great to get to do it with my sisters and Kate because we all wanted to do some of the same goofy things (like eat at certain places) that I'm not sure other people would always want to do. Maybe this sister trip thing should become a yearly (or every other year?) tradition!