New York, New York

In March my dad and I actually took a trip to New York City!  It was so cool.  I had never been there and it was great to see so many places I had only ever seen on TV.  My mom booked the trip for us and gave us the tickets for Christmas.  The main event of our trip surrounded the BNP Paribas Showdown between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick.  I was really excited to see them play.  We had seen Roddick play before, but never Federer.  The tennis match was in Madison Square Garden, but wasn't actually until the last day of our trip, so we explored the city for a few days.

Our first night we hit up Times Square.  Even at 10-11 pm it was crowded with people.  They also had one of the cooler Disney stores I had been to, complete with specialty New York Vinylmations.

The next morning we headed to ground zero and the World Trade Center Memorial.  We found the name of Chris Newton, one of my dads very good friends from high school, on the memorial.  He was in the plane that hit the Pentagon.

This is one of the only pictures with me and Dad both in it because he was mostly behind the camera, but we found our reflection in a building at the memorial and took a few pictures.  I think we were laughing because we knew people were probably wondering how much more tourist-y we could get.

We caught a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty, which was cool.  

We also got some pictures by the Wall Street Bull, which isn't actually on Wall Street, but is close.  There were some barricades put up so we couldn't actually touch it.

Our last morning we ate breakfast at the Irish Times Pub across the street from Madison Square Garden, for some traditional Irish breakfast.  While we were there our waiter INSISTED that before we left New York we had to go to Central Park specifically to Strawberry Fields, which is a section of the park dedicated to John Lennon.  We thought, "Sure, why not?" So we jumped on the subway and headed out there.  And boy are we glad!  Just kidding.  There was almost nothing there.  It literally is just trees and a walkway, with a circle mosaic in the ground that said, "Imagine."  I guess it would be moving if you were a big Lennon fan, but for me it was underwhelming.

What was nice about going there though, was that on the walk back we ran into the Manhattan temple.  All in all it was an awesome trip to New York with my dad.