Manhattan, NY (January 6, 2015)

Steve has been to New York City on business many times, and has always wanted to take me, but time just hasn’t allowed. So my Christmas present from Steve was a trip to the Big Apple with our girls. Steve had to work, but the girls would still be on their Christmas break, so the timing was great. Now I have to confess, I am not a big city girl, so the thought of taking our two young cubs (they’re only 18 and 21), into the big city all by myself, and feeding them to the wolves on purpose, was just a little bit daunting to me. I fretted over the trip for quite some time, but somewhere deep down inside, I was super excited too. My biggest fear was transportation from the Newark Airport into the City, and back out again. We really don’t do trains in Denver, so this was going to be a new experience for me. After a lot of research, we headed out into the great unknown. We flew Southwest from Denver to the Newark airport, where we then had to look for the NJTransit machines to purchase our train tickets. 

My research told me that I would need to purchase round trip tickets at the airport, so that upon our return trip, we could use our tickets for the air train as well as the NJTransit. I told the girls why we were buying the round trip tickets, even though I didn’t really understand it myself, but I did as I was told; Three round trip tickets from Newark to Penn Station, New York. We used our credit card to purchase the tickets, $75.00 for all three tickets. A bargain. We headed down the hall, and there was a terminal with tracks and glass doors on both sides. 

Ahh, so this must be the air train they were talking about. As our air train approached, it was a series of small cars. Only about 6-8 people could fit in each little car, so we had to make sure that we could all get in one together. Success, we were on the air train, now we just had to figure out where to get off. I can’t remember exactly, because I was kind of freaking out, but it seems like it went to the main airport terminal, and a few parking garage stops, and finally, the last stop (I think) was the NJTransit. We got off of the air train, and started looking for the right tracks for the train to Penn Station, NY. You know, if you ask enough people, and they keep pointing you in the right direction, it’s amazing how you can eventually find where you are going. We found our tracks, and waited for our train.  

The train was very nice, very clean, and pretty fast. From my research, I was pretty sure that Penn Station, NY was the last stop on this train, but of course, as any small town girl would do, I continued freaking out. There are two Penn Station stops on the train route, one in Newark, and one in NYC. We had to make sure to get off at the right one. It was now dark on the east coast, and I knew that we would still have to find our hotel once we got to the city. 

Probably five or six stops later, we finally made it to our destination. We got off the train and entered Penn Station, NYC. Penn Station wasn’t as huge as I expected, but it sure was crowded, even at 9:00 at night. It took up a full city block, and had signs at each exit for the cross streets you would be approaching from those doors. We originally thought that we would just walk to our hotel, about 11 blocks from Penn Station, which seemed reasonable, but now that it’s so dark, is that still a good idea? We headed out the doors that our little map told us to use, and to our surprise, the streets were full of people. All of the businesses were lit up and open for business. Yes, we would definitely walk to our hotel. This is great! Of course, never having been in Manhattan before, we had to take in the sights on the way to our hotel, so it took a little while to get there. We finally found our hotel, Holiday Inn Express Times Square. The hotel front was very tiny, and the building went straight up. We got checked in to our room and headed up on the elevator to check it out. We got off on the 29th floor, and were amazed to see that there were only 6 rooms per floor, three to the left of the elevators and three to the right. In Colorado there is room to spread out, so there are usually 20-30 rooms per floor. This was interesting. Our room was tiny, with two queen sized beds, and very little else. It was difficult to find a place for three suitcases, but we managed. If we wanted to sit down, it would have to be on the bed. But we knew that we wouldn’t be spending much time in our room anyway. And besides, the view was incredible! Our room overlooked the New Yorker, and the expanse of city that lay beyond it. 

Gorgeous view from the 29th floor!

We got settled in a little bit, and headed out to see Times Square. It was a 15 minute walk, with very crowded streets. It was very cold, so we kept ducking into stores to warm up. Times Square is near the garment and theatre districts, with so much shopping right at your fingertips. We had fun taking a cursory look at stores like H&M, M&M World, Fossil, etc. 

As we headed back to our hotel, we stopped at a burger place called the Shake Shack. Since we hadn’t had much to eat all day, we happily ordered burgers, fries and shakes. It tasted great, or maybe we were all just really hungry, but either way it was a fun, crowded, standing room only diner. 

 

Waiting for our order.  Standing room only.

So yummy!  Definitely worth the wait, and we actually found a little table.

To our delight, when we got back to our hotel, they had carafes of hot cocoa and coffee waiting in the lobby for us cold weary travelers.