The five days leading up to our girly trip was an obstacle course. Whenever I start to think about how I was actually thinking about visiting family in Tampa before leaving, my insanity laugh emerges. Between the numerous phone calls, last minute shopping trips, Morgan getting sick, emptying out our closet, garage and laundry room (Again, that’s a whole other blog story.), having my upper left bracket pop off on my braces the day before, getting that temporarily fixed and running to the storage unit, I was actually thinking I would never get out of Orlando. But at 7:00 AM, Annette, Amy, Sara and I were on that Delta plane heading to LaGuardia. The flight went extremely well. I forgot what it was like to travel without having a little five year old girl talking my ear off. Our first NYC experience together was the taxi cab ride to the hotel. Only three could fit in the back. One would have to sit up front with the cabby. Seeing the nervous looks on my lovely ladies’ faces, I quickly yelled “SHOTGUN!” to solve the issue. Even the cab driver laughed, but the humor soon faded once we were on the road. I so prefer the back seat!
Our first main stop was Time Square. Amy had plans to meet up with a childhood friend at this time while Annette, Sara and I took photos and ate lunch at Planet Hollywood. That gave us enough time before venturing off to our 2 PM appointment to climb the Statue of Liberty. Without Annette, this special treat would not have been possible. She spent nearly the entire day on the phone the first time tickets were offered for the reopening of the crown. It had been closed since 9-11. We later found out after our spots were secured that tickets were sold out till the end of the year, and on the weekends till February 2010. Based on my experience in March, I felt it necessary to arrive at Battery Park by 1 PM. My chin hit the floor as we got out of the taxi - hundreds upon hundreds of people in various lines. We were in shock and in awe!Annette and Sara do not panic – EVER! And so I followed suit, but we were all quite afraid our chances to jump on a ferry by our appointment time were slim to none. Thankfully we found the will call booth (highly recommend purchasing Liberty tickets online) which happened to be the shorte
st line there. As we waited for them to verify our identities, I overheard several people upset at the fact they were unable to purchase crown tickets. As soon as that ticket was placed in my hand, I held on to it for dear life. Only ten people are sanctioned to climb those stairs every half hour. Those tickets were priceless and if comparing them to Disney – fast passes as well. NO joke! We were bumped up to the front of the ferry line, skipped the first security screening, and bumped up to the front of the main security screening… oh if you could have seen the looks we got. Wow! I know how long that line is – at least 45 minutes, and we got to skip it. The best part of this service wasn’t just skipping through all of the lines and hassles. We got special treatment from the park rangers – treated like royalty. We were all so excited, so giddy, but we still had 354 stairs to climb. Below is the video documenting our ascent.It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. And talk about a small world… when we reached the top we met a couple visiting from Kissimmee! The views were breathtaking, and I cannot stress enough that is this a MUST see when in New York. After climbing down, we quickly did some shopping and more photos of the lovely Miss Liberty before jumping on the ferry for our hotel. Tonight we have tickets to see “Mamma Mia!” at 8 PM. We boarded the boat by 4… that should be plenty of time… right?
1 comment:
Wow oh wow, that was an incredible video! You were just a few feet away from Lady Liberty's "stinky pit" (as we call them around here). Incredible.
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