Christmas Season in New York City

I've heard many times that seeing New York City at Christmas time is a must, so I planned a ladies' trip for the first weekend in December. I went with Tresha and Michelle, who live in southern Virginia. We were in the same ward together when we lived in Germany.

We stayed at the Navy Lodge on Staten Island, which was only about exactly a four-hour drive from Stafford. The rooms were clean, comfortable and best of all, very affordable!

We took the Staten Island Ferry (which is free) to get to Manhattan.

The first thing we did was to take the subway from the ferry to uptown, where the big department stores had their Christmas lights and window displays. They were really fun to see.

 There was a Christmas lights show playing about every fifteen minutes on the upper stories of the Saks Fifth Avenue Department store.

As we walked between the Christmas lights displays, we passed the New York Public Library, and the lion outside the front entrance was also in the holiday spirit.

 We saw the Empire State Building,

the Chrysler Building

                                                                                        and 30 Rock all lit up as we wandered the streets on our quest to see New York City's best Christmas lights and decorations.

This is a closeup of the tree in Rockefeller Center.
We walked past the studio where the Tonight Show is filmed.

And also went to FAO Schwarz, because I just had to play the BIG Piano they have on the second floor of the store.

I was lucky that there wasn't a line and I was able to play it for about three minutes.

It was lots of fun! Another thing off my bucket list.

We were pretty worn out after doing all that walking, so we headed back on the Subway to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. We were shocked to see the main entrance blocked off and about thirty police men standing in front of the entrance. (Same place as in the photo at the beginning of the post, but from a back view.)

We were able to get into the terminal through a side door, and read on the internet later that night that the police were in front of the terminal because about a 1,000 protesters were allegedly on their way to the ferry. We never saw the protesters in New York City and only saw a handful in Staten Island.

The next two photos were taken the next morning as we took the Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan--some great view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and the new World Trade Center Building.

Our first stop of the day was to see the 10am showing of the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular show at Radio City Music Hall. Yes, it truly was a spectacular show.

 I was pleasantly surprised there was a nativity scene at the end.

After the show we ate lunch and took pictures of Rockefeller Center. Not as pretty as it was at night, but easier to get good pictures!!

 I've seen the gold statue many times in TV shows and movies, but this was my first time to see it in person. The skating rink is in front of it.

There really wasn't a good place to get a picture with the statue, though I tried.

We went to a German-style Christmas market in Union Square. I put this picture in because it looks like a German market except for the Empire State Building and the American flag in the background!!

We walked through Times Square, where there were people dressed up hoping to get tourists to pay to have a picture taken with them. 

Our last stop of the day was at the 9/11 Memorial that opened last year. 

 It was stunning.

More pretty Christmas lights in a plaza near the 9/11 Memorial.

Our last day of the trip was spent in New Jersey. We did some Christmas shopping at some outlet stores, then went to the seaside resort town of Cape May.

There we went on their Christmas Candlelight tour of some of their historic homes. 

It was raining pretty hard the entire time we were walking to and standing in lines to get into the homes, but at least it wasn't very cold.

 The homes were spread out quite a bit, so we didn't get the chance to see all of them. It would have been more enjoyable if it hadn't been raining.

After the home tour ended we drove straight back to Virginia, and arrived back to my house at around 1 am. We saw lots of great sights and did almost everything I wanted to, except for walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.