Another Trip to the Big Apple

I took a two-day trip to New York City with two friends on June 17th and 18th. We took the DC to NYC bus that left Virginia at 8am and dropped us off at Times Square in NYC at around 1:30pm. We were able to walk to the Residence Inn we were staying at and they let us check in early, so we dropped off our luggage.

The first thing we did in NYC was get on the subway down to lower Manhattan to take the Staten Island Ferry. We mostly wanted to ride the ferry (it's free) to get some good views from the deck of the ship. 

 We had a great view of the Statue of Liberty,

 and of the Manhattan skyline, including the new World Trade Center. We took the ferry to Staten Island and came right back on the return ferry.

 That evening we had tickets to see the Tony award winning play, "The King and I". The Manhattan LDS Temple is across the street from the Lincoln Center, where the play was being performed. I kind of like the yellow taxi cabs in the background, to show how the temple is right downtown.

 We handed our camera to a lady hoping she'd get the words "Lincoln Center Theater" behind us, but instead she got our knees and cut off the sign that we wanted to have in the picture. Sigh.

 The performance, sets, costumes and staging was fantastic. It was a delightful show, and reminded me of the year the kids and I were in the summer theater production of "The King and I" back in 1993. I hummed along with most of the songs.

The next morning after the most impressive buffet breakfast I've ever seen at a Residence Inn, headed out to see a few more sights.We saw the Chrysler building,

 and walked through the New York Public Library on our way to

Grand Central Station.

 Where we caught the subway to go to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge was on my New York City bucket list, and I couldn't fit it in when I went last December, so it was at the top of my list (after seeing the play) for this trip.

 Here's the view of Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Our next stop was Wall Street. Where we saw the New York Stock Exchange,

and Federal Hall. Erected on the spot where George Washington took the oath of office

 in 1789 to become the first president of the United States. It's run by the National Park service, so I got a stamp in my National Parks passport.

At the end of Wall Street was the bull statue I've seen in movies. It's smaller in real life.

 I had to take a picture of all the people around it, because we had to wait our turn to get a photo.

I took it a bit easy and scaled back some of our plans to see things because my legs looked like this.

This is a new development that happens when I stand on my legs for too long (I've discovered two hours is about my maximum). The blood vessels in my legs seem to not be able to get the blood back up and instead pools in my legs. That's my self diagnosis.

I went to the doctor after I returned from New York, but she thought it might be an allergic reaction to the blood pressure medicine I take. It's happened to me several times before, but never to this extreme. It looks like a rash, but it isn't. It's under the skin, not on the skin. I wore some compression ankle-to-knee stockings, and I think they helped.