Birthday Trip to NYC with Lissa

DAY ONE

Lissa and I planned a trip to New York City over my birthday in September. She flew there from Houston and I took the bus from Virginia, and we met up about noon on a Thursday. Our first stop was to see Grant's tomb, which is on the north western part of Manhattan.

 As you can see, the weather was great!

 This was a mosaic inside the tomb.

                                                This was a mosaic inside the tomb.

I'm not sure why General Grant warranted such a fancy tomb in New York City, but I guess everyone's heard of it because of the old joke, "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?"

Next we made a quick stop into St. Patrick's Cathedral.

 It's very beautiful inside.

 Our last stop of the day was to the Rockefeller Center.

 We thought it would be fun to go to the "top of the rock" to see the views of the city at night.

This photo op represents the famous picture of workers from the 1930's eating their lunch sitting on a beam overlooking the city from dozens of floors up.

That's the Empire State Building in the background.

Here's the view without the glassy glare. 

This is a view out a different side of the building. That tall tower is a fairly new residential building.

I'm putting this picture in because you can see the full moon in the center of the picture.

 This picture was taken later that evening, and we noticed the two beams of light that weren't in our earlier pictures.

Here's the same view without the glass, so the view of the two beams are easier to see. It was a few days before 9/11, so I guess they were commemorating the events of 16 years ago.

DAY TWO

The first thing we did on my birthday was to take the Staten Island Ferry to get some view of the Manhattan skyline and of the Statue of Liberty.

 Here's the Manhattan skyline,

and if you look closely, you'll see the Statue of Liberty behind Lissa.

Here's a better view of it.

 The next thing we did was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

 This is about the only one of our many "selfies" that sort of turned out okay!!

We walked all the way to Brooklyn. While we were there we sat in a park and ate our lunch, then took the subway back to Manhattan. 

 The last time I was in NYC the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt was closed for renovations, so I wanted to see it this time.

 Here are some interior views.

 I thought it was funny that I can be seen in the mirror taking the picture with my phone.

 Of course I posed by the piano.

We had about an hour-long tour of the Roosevelt house.

That night we had dinner at Junior's, which is a famous NYC restaurant. 

 I can tell you that I was disappointed in the food and don't have a clue why the place is so well known. Those onion rings on my plate had so much breading I couldn't taste the onions at all.

 Ever since Lissa heard that Anastasia had been turned into a Broadway play, she wanted to go.

 It was one of her favorite movies when she was young, so we made a plan to go see it together.

It was well done and had the same good music from the animated movie from the nineties.

 After the play was over the actors came out to the street to sign autographs. Here's Lissa with the star who played the lead, Dimitri.

This was the actress who played Anastasia, so it was pretty cool for Lissa to get such a good picture with her.

DAY THREE

 On our way to Central park we stopped in at the New York Public Library.

 The architectural details throughout the building were just amazing.

 In the children's library there was a display of the authentic stuffed animals that inspired the "Winnie the Pooh" books.

That was pretty awesome to see!!

We decided to splurge and take an hour-long carriage ride around Central Park, just like we've seen in movies.

 It probably wasn't worth the money, but at least there was someone to take pictures of both of us together!

 The last stop of the trip was to the "Sprinkles" cupcake shop. It may have been the shop that started the cupcake craze a dozen years ago. It wasn't crowded at all, and we each bought a couple of cupcakes.

I counted it as my birthday cake for my 58th birthday. We packed A LOT into our two and a half days in New York and had a super time!!