Last week we took the girls to NYC. It was J and C's second trip (they last visited in March 2019) and both R1 and R2's first trip.
Highlights for me:
- Visiting a different neighborhood every day
- Spanish music on the very Spanish jitney taking us from Times Square to Weehawken every night
- Asking R1, "What do you think of the [subway] trains?" Her answer, "Well, they're running!"
- So. Many. Hamentashen. (Purim was Wednesday, March 16th.)
One of the lovely things about NYC is that you can almost "travel the world" by visiting different neighborhoods. When we lived in NYC (2006-2009ish) we lived in a very Greek neighborhood close to LaGuardia Airport, Astoria Queens, so our first order of business was taking a taxi to Ditmars Boulevard and grabbing lunch at Taverna Kyclades, an old haunt of ours. The interior was recently redone, and it was nice but lacked the old-world warmth that we loved the place for. On the way to Taverna Kyclades we were able to point out our old apartment to the girls, and they were decidedly not impressed. "It looks dirty!" Yeah, kid, all of NYC has that scruffy sheen. In the immortal words of my middle brother, all of NYC "looks beat to hell."
When we first got to our AirBNB in Weehawken I was a little discomfited by the sign at the front door. It ended up being a fairly nice place, if a little out of the way. Traveling with a large family means we needed a lot of beds, so it was either stay in NJ or pay out the nose. We chose NJ. The apartment had a nice window where one could watch the street-happenings. It was also located in a very Hispanic neighborhood with lots of lovely Colombia pastry and coffee shops. It was amusing, however, when we got on the jitney from Manhattan and were often questioned, "Are you sure you know where you're going?"
One fun part about being a tourist in NYC is doing all the tourist-y things that we didn't do while we lived there: touring the Statue of Liberty, seeing Broadway shows, etc.
We had lots of good food, of course. We had Greek, Italian, Israeli (at Miriam), and dim sum (Golden Unicorn). It was fun getting to see an entirely different neighborhood each day. The Jewish Children's Museum in Crown Heights was fun to visit with the girls; they had lots of fun Jewish (and biblical) history.
We also hit up a few other museums, including the Met. We walked a lot. We rode a lot of buses. We rode a lot of trains. Sometimes R1 and R2 went into "overload shutdown" as a safety measure.
We enjoyed the trip, but I think I speak for all of us when I say we're glad to be home!