That's what NYC looks like from the sky.
But 25 minutes later when the plane lands and you smuggle your bags from the clenches of the mechanical rotating beast, and you step outside already covered in a dirty film from recycled airplane air and your forced to mesh that film with the new film of the thick humid air and the stench of rotting garbage in your nose coupled with tired hairy foreign men with their broken English and filthy facial hair clad in smoke and sweat laced garments yelling at you about your oversize suitcase they can't seem to stuff into the back of their cab at 3:30am at New Jerseys Newark Airport, then....then...you know you've made it to the Big Apple.
Ah the sweet aroma of unfriendliness, obscenities and general vulgerness. NYC is everything your childhood dreams of what Sesame Street and the Today Show are not. In a way. In others, its ten thousand times better that any pathetic colorless dream one might imagine about the big city. Its hot, its always going, its loud and its beautiful.
Ours was a love hate relationship, me and NYC. The 20 year old explorer in me and my stake on the city in the prime of my independent woman days gripped onto me like an old friend. Immediately the comfort sounds of honking, endless sirens of cop cars or fire brigades and sanitary workers soothed me to sleep. My children and husband on the other hand, yeah, not so much. Jeff was a little bothered, by the noise and my dear little ones, were in a constant perch of interest about "where the fire was". Thank goodness for big picture window at the W Hotel on the 15th floor. We had a great view of Union Station Park and the stream of taxi lights by nightfall, and the ant farm of people by day. Ethan and Jacob adored sitting in the window sill watching with careful eye at the city move and shake below. Like me. I loved it too. The change from the gentle sway of immature trees of the soft ocean breeze in our backyard, while matched in beauty, has nothing on the excitement of downtown Manhattan.
It was a restless sleep that first night.
But sun came up and the birds chirped and the angry taxi drivers were still honking their nasty horns. We dressed and ventured out into the city jungle.
Our first day we walked, in the hot sweltering heat, sans stroller (yes, it was my brilliant idea to go to NYC without a stroller for the 1st time in 6 1/2 year. I know, genius right?) apparently my kids, or at least Jacob, is not ready to give that last lingering item of babyhood up yet. <---Not to mention that those strollers provide much needed storage space for gallons of sanitizer and cameras and bits of uneaten wrapped up food for those "just in case" moments when your child has a meltdown.
Moving on...
We had pizza at Joe's, walked Soho, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, and of course, Ground Zero. It was 8 years ago that I stood in St. Paul's church and cried my eyes into oblivion. The soft light filtered in this time and what I remembered as dark and dreary was now an open and airy sanctuary full of hope, community and remembrance. It was in ways a mini museum to what I had seen 8 year prior. My heart caught in my throat a few times as I walked around. When we made out way outside, Jeff and I rested on a bench in the yard and cemetery below the shade of the trees and clouds while our kids played "dinosaur" through the gravestones. While that might ring a bit strange or morbid, it really was a serene moment in which I found pure innocence and joy and comfort seeing kids be kids and be careless because their world is so. A carefree if we do things right, and my kids are beyond blessed to live in a country where they have just that, the ability to be carefree and woeless. Ethan sang loudly there in church courtyard about God and no one looked twice. That's an amazing thing which I never want to take it for granted.
Day two we headed out to Central Park and the Natural History Museum. Both were amazing and on a much cooler day in NY, we had a fantastic time walking. Mind you, my husband is a bit of a germ-a-phob so NYC was a little traumatizing in that department. I say this with a word of caution, becuase really NYC without kids would have been easy. Jeff's been before and had a great time, but when you have kids, little kids, kids who touch things and then stick their fingers in there mouth or their nose, or your mouth or your nose, you have more...fears...about just what's on those hands. Especially when they boys decided to writhe their sweet little innocent body's up and down the filth laden poles of the subway. Completely unaware of what kinda of potential venereal diseases might be crawling the steel pole, it was a battle to get them to realize how disgusting they were truly being.
Now, for a kid who use to think he was a T-Rex, you'd think, something like the Natural History Museum would have been a swell place to be. By far one of the best museums' we've ever been to, if your not an obsessive art lover (me= obsessive art lover. my 3 boys= not obsessive art lovers). So we head right to floor 4, dinosaur fossils and when we get there, both kids open their mouth do a priceless "oooohhhhh wooooooow!!" and that pretty much was it. They moved on, with Jacob giggling uncontrollably about wanting a "bumpy ride" from Ethan in the stroller (yeah, we broke down and bough one early that morning at Babies R Us one block down). "Bumpy Ride" was where Ethan pushed Jacob down a bunch of tiny stairs in the display room. Eventually the bumpy ride morphed into Ethan violently shaking the stroller while they both laughed their heads off.
It was the quintessential family vacation at that point. Jeff with the video camera rolling trying to get our attention to stand in front of the behemoth giant fossils manipulated to look like a raptor was tearing the guts our of another dinosaur; me softly but frantically trying to get my kids under control and stop them from shaking the bejebus outta each other. Jacob by the way was letting his head flop back and forth as if his neck was a measly piece of lose sewing thread. Then there were the hundred other camera and croc clad tourists doing the same thing. It was a pretty priceless moment when I stand outside myself and look at it as a whole picture. I'm in uncontrollable laughter mode about it now. Can't. Stop. Snickering. Bawhahahaha!
That evening commenced with another stroll through Central Park, a ferry ride across the Hudson to Hoboken, NJ where we met and had a BBQ with my husbands cousins wife's brother. Yeah.
They were incredibly sweet to have us over and cook steak for us, and the best part was they also have two little boys who are 5 and 3 and all the kids had a blast playing together. We left around 9ish and had a brilliant walk to the Path which took us back to NYC and then a lively walk at 10 pm to our hotel. Thank goodness our kids never really adjusted to the small time change, because they were still wide awake and somewhat chipper at 10, just like the rest of the city.
Day three was relaxing. Jeff had a morning meeting in with some guys from Scandinavia I think. I called them Hans and Franz. The boys and I slept in and I can't remember if it was this morning or another one, but at one point I took them for breakfast at Dunkin Donuts (don't judge). It was fun. Fat fun.
When my dashing lover was done with business we headed over to Central Park again and rowed boats in the Pond for a few hours. The weather was perfect. The topography was classic and the company was divine. My most loved family all smiling in the sun with the beautiful backdrop of murky pond water lined in lilly pads, sweet turtles poking their heads out of the water for a greeting and a lush green leaves drooping with a soft bend of branches out across the waters edge leaving magical canopies for us to row under and tell secrets. We set up the ipod and played Pirates of the Caribbean and Jack Sparrow (Eth) and Will Turner (Jake) lead the charge in giving us directions as to where to row. I got to be the princess quite often that day and the boys would pretend to save me.
When our time was up there, we sprawled out on a white linen picnic blanket and had lunch and played hide and seek, freeze tag, and duck duck goose for while longer before packing up and riding the carousel. We ended the day with a taxi ride back to the W and a relaxing dinner at a grill down the street from us. It ended with a giant ice cream sundae split 4 ways and warm showers to cleanse away the days dirt. We snuggled the boys into bed and the packed up for our next leg of the journey, Norwegian Cruise Lines new ship EPIC which would board in the morning.
More to come, but lastly...this:
We realized once we landed in NJ that Jacob had put on two different shoes before we left. So...yeah, he wore two different shoes the whole time. At lease they were nearly the same colors and one right and one left shoe, right?!
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