Our plane landed in Newark at 10:57. After collecting our luggage we rode Super Shuttle packed in like sardines with many other people to our hotel, Sheriton Towers. It was quite a unique experience and our first with New York driving, with bumper to bumper drivers.
After checking into our hotel, we hit the streets for some sight seeing. Our first stop was the theatre district. We will see Wicked on January 1st at the Gershwin. We then went to Rockefeller Center and saw the ice skaters and long line to skate which we passed by. We went to FAO Schwartz. Neither Jessa nor Tyler wanted to play on the giant floor piano because there were no other big kids on it - only little kids. Outside FAO Schwartz is the Apple Store, which is large glass cube. It is really cool. When you walk in, you can choose either the spiral glass staircase or the glass elevator to take you down to the store.
We ate dinner at Applebees for only $96. After dinner, walked past Central Park and back to Times Square to see all the advertisements lit up.
Our final stop was the Empire State Building. Our least favorite part of that was the long lines, but seeing the city night lights from the top was priceless. $165.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Macy's for Jessa to buy a scarf. We also went up to the 8th floor to see the toys.
We covered a lot of ground and walked a lot of miles. We saw a lot of street vendors, pretzels by day/lamb sticks at night, hot dogs, newspapers/magazines, 2009 hats/glasses, and late at night many sheet vendors selling purses and bags from a bed sheet thrown out on the sidewalk. I guess that makes it easy to pack up and leave quickly.
Back in our hotel, we were happy to get our shoes off. Wednesday, we are thinking maybe a bus tour to other sites for less walking.
