Musings of New York City

I had the fortunate opportunity to take my oldest son to New York City for a quick trip. We boarded a bus at 11pm one cold rainy night in December to wake up in New York City at the crack of dawn the next morning.

Way back in September he came home from school talking about September 11th and the events that took place that day, a few days later it was brought to my attention of a great bus trip that was going to be going to the city in December.

 So I went home and asked if he wanted to go... of course he did... so I made the arrangements. I have never been to NYC either, so I was equal parts excited and scared... mostly scared that I didn't want to get lost or the even more important, somehow get separated from the boy. Excited because I wanted to see every possible thing I could in the short amount of time I was there. I knew that wasn't possible, but I was going to try.


Our first day there we walked and walked and walked some more... clocking in over 20,000 steps. We saw the Empire State Building, the tree and ice rink at Rockafeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Macy's windows, the iconic ball for New Year's was already up and waiting for the countdown. I hailed my first ever cab and funny enough we ran into some people that we know (who live on our street). We went to the M&M store and Hershey's store. We checked out the Lego store and Disney. Then we crashed and needed food... Bubba Gumps was our dinning choice. The kid said it was the best fries and chicken fingers he has ever had. We still had a few hours to go before we would get to our hotel room and neither of us were going to make it...

We were beat, so we headed to our hotel. The next morning we were dropped off in Chinatown. It was POURING DOWN RAIN... I cannot even begin to stress how soaked we were. We walked around with another group of people that was on the bus with us. We went to Tribeca and made our way down to the memorial. Between the rain and the fog, it made the whole experience of seeing the memorial that much more... I remember watching the coverage on the news at work that fateful day.  Words cannot even express the feeling of seeing the memorial in person.

We eventually made our way back to get picked up and headed home. Of course we couldn't leave without seeing one scandalous thing though right?? I mean we were doing really good... he didn't even notice the guitar playing cowboy that wears nothing but his tighty whities in Times Square...

But then... we went to the McDonald's and he went into the men's room to wash his hands... Let's just say what he saw in that bathroom made him laugh and made me cringe... He of course had to FaceTime his dad right away and tell him the story too... he ended up texting it to him though...

And, let me just say right here, that he was on his very best behavior the entire time. He listened to my every word, held my hand without any issues, he's nine so sometimes it can go either way about holding hands... He did question me a lot if we were lost and continuously made me prove on the Google Map that I knew where I was going.  So little faith in my navigating abilities, so I told him the story of when my mom gave me and my grandmother the wrong directions to get home from West Virginia and how I had to use my old school atlas to get us home... that calmed his concerns.


We had fun and the only complaints from either of us were when we were just too tired to go any further... We both want to go again next year... see some more of the things that we missed out on this time around...

So what is the point of all of this??  Well, I guess mostly that if you get the opportunity to take your child and do something amazing with them... do it... don't wait or put it off.  It doesn't have to be a weekend trip just do something, a meal, a movie, a trip to the museum.  Life is a precious thing, take the time to enjoy it with your child or children... they will thank you for it.