A Week in the Big City!

Earlier this month, Russ and I spent a week in NYC.  Our daughter and her husband are in the process of moving across the hall to a unit in a co-op building in Astoria Queens that they recently purchased.  Since they had access to both units for the month, we decided that it was time of a long overdue visit to the Big Apple.

Everyone seems to have their air travel horror stories, but this time we flew nonstop from Charlotte in the mid afternoon.  It was an easy drive to Charlotte on a sunny afternoon and we arrived at LaGuardia during this beautiful sunset.  It was a breeze!

Though Nora and Ari have not gained any square footage, they have gotten a few nice upgrades in the new space, they've had time to paint and add a new vanity and some new flooring, and they've had the luxury of an easy move across the hall and time to really sort through their belongings and create a more modern, stylish place.  One major gain was an impressive view of Manhattan from their 12th floor living room window.

 They are just a few blocks from the East River.  If you enlarge the picture, you can see the river and the northern end of Roosevelt Island with the lighthouse at the very tip.  The taller buildings in the distance flank Central Park East.

This is the view at dusk, and at night it just sparkles!

We seemed to spend a lot of time on the trains and subway.  Here is a picture similar to others taken on other trips.

I'm not sure who my new friends are, but I do like the subway artwork!

Our first foray was to Brooklyn to see Nora's current workplace, Fusion Academy, and meet some of her colleagues.  I enjoyed seeing this quilt on the wall which Nora said was made and donated by a "satisfied parent."  

The shape is a surf board which is a Fusion symbol used on all their campuses.

In Nora's office, I also saw a couple examples of my handiwork.

You might remember that I made a flag banner for Nora's wedding shower and wedding brunch... here she has repurposed it as a wall decoration.

After lunch with Nora we continued on to the Brooklyn Museum.

We actually spent the majority of our afternoon in the series of exhibits on Coney Island, which were fascinating.  So, I had to share this picture of the cyclops.

One sunny day, on our way to Brooklyn again and an afternoon at IKEA, we emerged from the Subway at Times Square.

We paused with all the other tourists to watch the Revlon advertisement cycle through until we could see ourselves on the giant billboard.

You can see Russ in the picture above, but I am behind my iPhone.  It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to position the phone so both our faces showed.

Not really worth the time and effort, but it was fun!

Much of our weekend was spent sanding and painting, sorting and carrying things across the hall, but we were delighted to be able to help with some of the work of moving.  

Our only other touristy day was spent at the Museum of Natural History.  Though the day was sunny, it was quite cold and a perfect day for an indoor activity.

Here's Russ with Teddy Roosevelt... you can see that clear blue sky!

And I paid homage to my Buffalo roots...

before heading inside to see the dinosaurs.

We went to four "timed" special exhibits, including a walk through exhibit on new research on The Secret World of Microbes, the Butterfly Conservatory, where Russ made a friend...

and an underwater 3-D reef movie in the IMAX and a program about Dark Matter in the Hayden Planetarium.  It was a pretty full day!

In the evening, Nora treated us to dinner and a show at the City Winery.

A perfect ending to a perfect day!

This weekend both Western North Carolina and New York City are expecting to be impacted by a big winter storm that will bring snow to much of the eastern part of the US.  We were very lucky to have made this trip during the snowless part of January!