Day 1
We took the jetBlue red-eye into JFK. We left Salt Lake around 11:15PM and arrived in New York 5:30AM EST. The flight went pretty good, we were able to sleep most of the four hour flight.
One of the problems with the dynamics of this trip was that we couldn't check into our room until Thursday afternoon. This gave us about eight hours to kill before we could lie down and catch up on our sleep.
We took a taxi to our hotel and had them store our luggage until we could check in. We then went to a local deli and had some breakfast. At about 7:15AM, we decided to try and make the 8 o'clock session at the temple. We walked to Columbus Circle (at the southwest corner of Central Park) and caught the subway to the Lincoln Center where the temple is. We arrived at the temple just a few minutes before eight. They were very nice there and waited for us to change before they started. There was a really funny matron working in the clothing area. She was from Scotland and had a great accent. She had Rayma and I laughing. I've never been to a small temple before. It was an unique experience. The temple really is quite beautiful.
After the temple, Rayma wanted to go down to the garment district and look around. So we looked at the small map the hotel gave us and took the subway down to 35th street. This was pretty close to Madison Square Gardens. After getting our bearings, we walked around. But the only thing we really saw was a bunch of cloth stores. That was disappointing. So we still had four hours to kill...
We decided to go to a movie. We felt that New York surely had a movie theatre playing a show at 11:00AM. The only problem was we had no clue where a theatre was. We stopped at a Burger King for a potty break and to get a soda. I had the brilliant idea to phone CHA CHA. I told them that I was on 35th St near 7th Ave in New York and where would the closest movie theater be? They soon responded that the Beacon Theatre was located at 2124 Broadway. Now I've lived in Utah my entire life and if anybody were to ask me where 2124 would be, I would tell them that it would be between 21st and 22nd street.
So going on my Utah assumption, we took a taxi to 21st and Broadway. The taxi cost us 10 dollars with tip. We looked at the building numbers and they were around the 790 to 800 range. So we hailed another taxi and told the indian driver (who could barely speak english) to take us to 2124 Broadway. His first question was, "What cross-street is that?" I responded, "I have no idea.". He started driving north looking at books and calling his dispatch. No one knew what the cross street was.
When the driver was passing 63rd Street on Broadway, we spotted a movie theatre. This theatre was not the Beacon, but, we didn't care. We told the driver to stop and we paid him his 15 dollars and got out of the taxi.
We went into the movie theatre and found out that the first movie wasn't until 1:30PM. The same time we could get our hotel room. So we left the theatre and discovered, that we were only one block from the temple. We spent 25.00 looking for a movie theatre when there was a theatre right next door to the temple.
We took the subway to our hotel at 12:00 noon and they allowed us to check in two hours early. We went to the room, turned on the NCAA basketball playoffs and promptly went to sleep.
We decided to go to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We took the subway down to the Staten Island ferry and walked over to the SOL and EI ferry. We hadn't eaten lunch yet so we shared a pretzel. I took this picture of the SOL while on the ferry (obviously). We knew that we couldn't go up inside the statue, so we decided not to get off the ferry.
When we returned to Manhatten we decided to go see Grand Central Station. Again, we got on the subway and walked through the terminal. We decided that we wanted Italian for dinner and we had not yet made it to our favorite bakery in Little Italy. So we went back to our room and rested and then made our way to Little Italy for dinner and an eclair.
