{"id":1252,"date":"2016-02-19T20:45:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-20T01:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2020-06-24T20:09:47","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T00:09:47","slug":"nyc-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/?p=1252","title":{"rendered":"NYC 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"nyc<\/a>
Finding your way in NYC really is easier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meghan and I like to keep our kids exposed to the cultural world, giving them a cosmopolitan worldview.\u00a0 I chose a job near Boston in part to allow frequent trips into the city.\u00a0 But one city isn’t enough to give them a breadth of experience.<\/p>\n

We took an overnight trip to New York City during February school vacation.\u00a0 Discovery Times Square<\/a> is currently exhibiting The Vikings<\/a>, which is of particular interest to Meghan and Alpha.\u00a0 (That isn’t to say there isn’t interest from me and Beta, they’re just that much more keen.)\u00a0 Meghan found a great deal on motel rooms (the girls are old enough now that we need two) right by Times Square at Four Points by Sheraton<\/a>.\u00a0 The view wasn’t anything to write home about but the location can’t be beat: two blocks from Times Square.\u00a0 The rooms were clean and neat, and the staff were bend-over-backwards friendly.\u00a0 I would totally stay there again.<\/p>\n

We drove down early Wednesday morning, dropping Butter off at Marty’s<\/a> and picking up Meghan’s mom (aka Baba) on the way.\u00a0 Baba loves going to NYC, she knows the lay of the land better than we do, and she’s a bit more adventurous than I am when the kids are around<\/span>, so we invited her along.\u00a0 She offered to share the kids’s room to keep costs down — and that provided peace of mind overnight, too<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"Meghan<\/a>
Meghan yelled at me for this selfie. She insisted that it was inappropriate to do while making 75 mph on I-91.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We rolled into town around noon and got situated in the hotel with time to spare before our exhibit reservations.\u00a0 We walked from the hotel and poked around Times Square for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

\"woody<\/a>
Click to expand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were a pair of people in costume, one dressed as Woody from Toy Story and the other as Olaf from Frozen, soliciting tips.\u00a0 They made their own costumes and don’t work for anyone but themselves, so Meghan got photos with each and tipped them a few bucks.<\/p>\n

I continue to be amazed how many people are continually in New York City.\u00a0 The crush of people feel like there’s an event going on somewhere, but it’s really just an every day occurrence.\u00a0 Dozens of people at every crosswalk, hundreds of people on every sidewalk, all the time.\u00a0 Boston has nothing on NYC.<\/p>\n

\"alpha<\/a>
Alpha holding a reproduction Viking sword<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We made our way through the crowds to the exhibit and spent about an hour and a half learning about Vikings.\u00a0 As an aside: the exhibit is self-paced and just about the right length.\u00a0 They had a number of artifacts grouped into several themes about everyday life, instead of constructing a sequential historical narrative.<\/p>\n

We waited to get lunch until after the exhibit so we were somewhat famished.\u00a0 A few storefronts down from Discovery is a pizza and Italian restaurant called John’s of Times Square<\/a>, located in a former church.\u00a0 The adults had excellent pizza and the girls had excellent pasta.\u00a0 It might have been a case of hunger making the best sauce, but probably not.<\/p>\n

\"ulfbehrt<\/a>
There’s a great NOVA episode about the “mystical” Ulfberht sword<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After lunch we shopped around Times Square a bit.\u00a0 Alpha bought a New York-emblazoned sweat shirt and Beta got a pin for her hat.\u00a0 Baba noticed that Phantom of the Opera<\/a> was playing right in front of us, so she bought three tickets for 8 o’clock that night.\u00a0 Beta wasn’t interested and I was wiped from driving all day; we chose to stay in.<\/p>\n

We wandered back to the hotel to rest up.\u00a0 I had to step out in search of a pharmacy: we had a snafu when we left the house and forgot to pack our bathroom stuff.<\/p>\n

\"meghan<\/a>
Waiting for Phantom of the Opera to start<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our motel offers complimentary dinner stuffs on Wednesday nights.\u00a0 We were just coming off of lunch, not particularly hungry, but the food was delicious. Free wine and beer, too!<\/p>\n

We finished dinner and Beta and I headed up to our room to watch some TV and get ready for bed.\u00a0 Meghan, Baba, and Alpha headed out to their show, and didn’t get back until after I was asleep — sometime after 10:30 pm.\u00a0 They said they had a great time though!<\/p>\n

We started the next day with an excellent breakfast buffet at the motel.\u00a0 We seem to have a knack for choosing motels with great breakfasts; it really makes dollars stretch further if your breakfast is hearty when you’re traveling.<\/p>\n

We decided that we could fit in one more museum visit before leaving town.\u00a0 The American Museum of Natural History<\/a> was on our way home and is always worth a visit.\u00a0 We also considered the USS Intrepid<\/a> but decided to save it for another visit so we can give it the amount of time it deserves.<\/p>\n

\"wrong-way<\/a>
Notice the shadows. The sun is rising off to the right, but the cars are throwing shadows the wrong way. The strange beauty of a city made from glass.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We got in early and encountered almost no waiting to get into the parking garage and admissions line.\u00a0 We had three destinations in mind: the dinosaurs, the blue whale, and the gift shop.\u00a0 We got to see all three, in that order. The life-size blue whale model is stupendously large<\/a> – and that’s after seeing the full-size apatosaurus for comparison.<\/p>\n

\"baba<\/a>
Driving home (click to expand)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We made our way out of the city around 1 pm.\u00a0 We didn’t want to get home too late, and the drive can take upwards of six hours with stops and detours to Willimantic and Hampton. The ride home was uneventful, traffic was mostly light and Waze <\/a>didn’t let us down.\u00a0 Butter the dog was very happy to see us when we picked her up, and I was extremely happy to sleep in my own bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meghan and I like to keep our kids exposed to the cultural world, giving them a cosmopolitan worldview.\u00a0 I chose a job near Boston in part to allow frequent trips into the city.\u00a0 But one city isn’t enough to give them a breadth of experience. We took an overnight trip to New York City during … Continue reading “NYC 2016”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[107,104,165,265,115,164],"class_list":["post-1252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-alpha","tag-baba","tag-beta","tag-nyc","tag-review","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4o3FW-kc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1252"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}