New York City 2012 - Day 6

One World Trade Center - Freedom Tower being built

As much as I adore New York City, I am so happy to be home in Olympia, on my couch writing this blog.  Although it was after 10:00 PM and dark out when we got home tonight, I could just FEEL the green around me.  I am a Pacific Northwest girl through and through and I’m relishing the fact that I have a big house and yard, a car and a quiet neighborhood. 

This morning, Leah and I got the kids up and left the hotel at 6:15 to ride into Hoboken, New Jersey and visit Carlo’s Bake Shop.  It was Ashley’s biggest dream to go there, as Cake Boss is one of the kids’ favorite shows.  There were only about 3 people on the subway to Hoboken with us.  The streets there were peaceful, and the few blocks of town that we walked down were SO appealing, I wanted to explore all day.  Unfortunately we were on a tight schedule (surprise surprise) so Carlo’s was our only stop.

We arrived at the bakery about 9 minutes after it opened and there were maybe about 25 people in line.  Ten minutes later, the line had doubled, and it just kept growing.  The shop had shelves all along the walls with examples of cakes, the glass cases were full of cakes, pies, pastries, cookies, cupcakes, biscotti, cannoli…  each one looking more delicious and beautiful than the next.  We each chose something that we wanted to try and they wrapped our purchases in a box and tied it with a string.  I loved that so much.  I bought Ashley a sweatshirt and picked up an insulated coffee mug for Chad – who was fast asleep at the hotel with no desire to take a 2 hour round trip to a bakery, by the way.  Leah and I had coffee and we carried our goods back to the PATH station.  By now the streets of Hoboken were crowded with well-dressed, very serious business men and women making their way to the station as well.  We got on the train and the mob was stuffed into the train like sardines.  We stood shoulder to shoulder and those guys don’t say one word.  I’m pretty sure my kids were the only people talking on the train.

Something I noticed about the locals on the subway when the train accelerates: a New Yorker could be standing in the middle of the train, not holding on to anything, balancing a cup of water on their head and not spill a single drop.  They are a like a part of the train – they don’t even move.  We tourists, on the other hand, are a completely different  story.  We can be standing there, holding on to the bar for dear life with BOTH hands, and the second that trains starts moving, we just about fall over sideways because we’re unprepared, then we over correct and swing back the other way and end up looking like a very awkward pole dancer of sorts.  I can tell ya – it ain’t pretty.

We got back to the hotel and Chad had organized everybody’s things into piles to be packed.  We were able to pack all of our things in about 20 minutes, which is huge because 6 people in one hotel room are inclined to clutter things up. 

For breakfast we sampled our pastries.  Jackson ate a crumb Danish that was in his words, “THE best pastry I have EVER had.” (emphasis Jackson’s).  I took a bite of an éclair and it was actually gross.  It was sour and there wasn’t one thing I liked about the bite.  I was surprised.  We also sampled cannoli and it was very tasty.  It was a lot of sugar to have first thing in the morning, though.  Blech.

Leah wanted to give the Today Show one more shot, and we needed to go to the World Trade Center, so we split up.  She walked back up to Rockefeller and ended up walking behind Kathie Lee and Hoda while they taped their show.  Eventually she went into the café in the plaza and watched from there.  The 5 of us took the subway down to Cortlandt St. and walked around Ground Zero.  It is still a massive construction zone, but there was lots to see and experience.  We bought a book called, “Never Forget” from a man on the street and Chad and I explained to the kids, the events of September 11^th.  They KNOW what happened, but today they got to see it with their own eyes.  They got to go into the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site and see pictures and actual steel from the towers.  They listened to survivors tell their stories.  They became emotional and began to understand the scope of what New York went through that morning.  We went outside and tried to visualize the horror that must’ve been on those streets that day.  And now, over 10 years later, it’s hard to imagine that anything like that ever happened there. 

We walked around the cemetery at St. Paul’s Chapel, which is directly across the street from the World Trade Center.  It was built in 1716, George Washington worshipped there and it survived when the towers collapsed.  The kids weren’t as impressed with any of those facts, as they were with jumping out from behind the grave stones and scaring each other.  That’s the kind of stuff that matters to kids, you know. 

We moved on up to Trinity Church.  I wanted to find Alexander Hamilton’s grave so we walked around the cemetery.  The graves are over 200 years old, so you can imagine the eerie atmosphere.  We took some beautiful photos.  And again, the kids scared the ever lovin’ heck out of each other.  

I wasn’t going to tell you this embarrassing story, but I changed my mind. I's going to make me look like an idiot who knows nothing of American history, but I don’t care. It made us laugh and that’s all that matters:

Ashley, Me, and "President" Hamilton

So there I was, minding my own business, looking at the grave of Alexander Hamilton, when Chad walks over with his camera. I said, “hey, get a picture of me and Ashee-Too. This is the closest I’ll ever get to having my picture taken with a United States President.”  Chad took the picture like an obedient husband, and as I walked away (and tripped, mind you, over the 200-year-old headstone of a lady, probably desecrating her grave in some unforgiveable way) he said, “Hey Rach, I don’t think Alexander Hamilton was president.” And as the words were coming out of his mouth, I knew he was right. Instantly. But how do you recover from such an embarrassing display? My kids had just heard me say this guy was President of the United States, and so I needed him to have been the President. End of discussion. I decided I was going to be right no matter what, and I pulled out my trusty smart phone and desperately tried to make the internet agree with me. And it didn’t. And I confess I still don’t even know who was or was not our president 200 years ago.

We rode the subway back up to 59^th and walked over to FAO Schwartz where we were meeting Leah at noon.  Inside the iconic toy store, Ashley got to dance on the giant piano from “Big”, Ali bought a gift for her friend (always doing things for other people), Jackson became fascinated with some new cool toy called Myachi hand sack…  There was just so much to see and do.  Chad took pictures of the stuffed animals as if he were actually at a zoo.  It was a good way to wind-down, but it was getting late and we had to get to the airport.

Walking back to our hotel, we stopped at 5 Guys for lunch.  Chad and I don’t really eat cheeseburgers anymore these days, but this was our 2^nd time eating them on this vacation.  We were both discussing how we ate too much junk food and were feeling sort of “blah.”  But I will tell you this:  the cheeseburger at 5 Guys was one of the best we’ve ever had.  I’m thinking it might even beat Eagan’s here in O’Town.  Yup, I said it.

Our driver met us at the hotel at 2:30 and we loaded up and said goodbye to New York.  Just like that.  It was over.  And now came the part none of us really like.  The traveling home.  Do you ever feel like, when your vacation is over, it’s OVER and you just want to be home?  But then you have this long day of travelling ahead of you and it's the last thing you want to do?  Well, that’s how we felt.  At the airport, Chad’s stomach was aching a little bit.  I bought him some tums and we chalked it up to his body not being happy about the eating whatever we felt like this week. 

We boarded the plane, got situated and ready for a long flight, and about 10 minutes after take-off, Chad got sicker than I have ever seen him.  This blog could take bummer of a turn very quickly if I spend much time talking about it, but I will tell you my poor husband was miserable.  He blacked out at one point and I got the stewardesses and they rushed over to him and gave him a cold cloth for his head, had the oxygen tank ready for him and gave him juice and water to sip.  He would get super hot, then he'd get the chills so badly his whole body was shaking.  There’s no clever way to put a funny spin on this story.  It was terrible.  In that 6 hour flight, I sat rigid, staring at Chad making sure he was breathing almost the entire time. 

He slept in the limo on the way home.  Actually Leah and I were the only 2 who didn’t sleep on the way home.  He was feeling a bit better when he got into bed.  Well enough to make jokes, anyway.  I think that’s his way of comforting me, actually.  Chad just doesn’t get sick.  Ever.  So when he does, I don’t know how to handle it.  I had only 2 choices on the plane: I could either try to break the window with my shoe  and jump out of the plane at 32,000 feet, OR tend to my husband, reassure my kids and pray.  The window proved much too strong for my soft shoes, so after 20 minutes, I gave up and decided to stay with my family.
There are 100 ways it could’ve been worse.  And there are a billion things to be thankful for.  This was the vacation of a lifetime.  Truly.  Tomorrow I will stay home and play nurse to husband and mommy to my kids as we recover from the past 6 days.  It’s what I do best, you know.

Thanks for traveling with us – I love telling you our stories!

The Niemeyers