June 21: I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps...

Anneliese laughing at her funny mom!

Today was our full day in New York City.  Yay-photos again!  We first took the subway to Times Square where there was a Discovery Channel Lego Exhibition.  Just Randy and Joshua went to that and had a great time.  The girls and I walked around and went into some shops.  We found a Theater shop with an emphasis on musical theater with posters, scores, shirts from recent musicals, etc.  In the back room, they had huge bookshelves (with a ladder on a rod to slide around to get to the tops of the bookshelves) full of scripts of almost any play you could think of.  Anneliese bought a script for Sweeney Todd (Sondheim).  In times square was a huge yoga demonstration as well.  We were standing in the back--kind of weird to see that many butts poking up into the air!

(this is actually from yesterday--the huge cemetary we had to walk around
to get to Lisa's house)

On the subway

Times Square yoga-style

Theater district near Times Square

Theater district near Times Square

This is a bus that advertises for a nearby club.  They have
skeletons dressed up in evening wear on the bus and they
drive it around the neighborhood.

The same bus

After we picked up Randy and Joshua (who was very excited about the lego projects they saw), we headed to NYU.  We had an hour to get there on foot.  We walked about 35 blocks and got there 10 minutes late.  When I inquired about tours, I was emailed that they didn't do student led tours in the summer, and was given the address of the Tisch school to get a self-guided tour sheet.  When I double-checked on the address this morning, they had three tours set up--and they were all full.  So, we went anyway to the 1:00 session and of course, she wasn't on the list so I said something about emailing and trying early in the spring and maybe it didn't go through.  Anyway, she said it was fine, had Anneliese fill out an information card and gave us the stickers you have to wear to be able to get into the buildings on the tour.  We sat through the one hour info session (which was similar to what Anneliese and I heard when we went to a session in Minneapolis last winter from NYU.   Then we had an hour and a half tour with a student.  He was a linguistics major originally from Chaska, MN.  We saw the library, a classroom building, a bunch of other buildings, and Washington Square Park which serves as a de facto quad for NYU since they have buildings around three sides of it!  We went to the library, which during finals, is open until 5 am (normally 2 am)!!  Then we went to the Tisch school (a prestigious program at NYU for the arts) and the friendly guard at the desk let us in and told us to go to the 11th floor (instead of the 2nd floor my email had said).  They had a self-guided tour up there of the top 4 floors and we were able to look around--great!  As we were walking, I saw a national register of historic places plaque on one of the NYU buildings--it was the Triangle Shirtwaist Building!  (Site of a huge fire in which many employees--most of them women--died.  Google it if you've never heard of it).  

The Flat Iron building on our way to NYU.

Cool cafe we saw

Public art

Joshua finally touching the top of the Empire State Building!

The actual Empire State Building in the distance

The iconic arch in Washington Square Park.

The fountain in Washington Square Park

Anneliese in her new purple purchase from the bookstore!

Then 2 subway rides to Central Park (had to switch from an express train to a local train) an we entered Central Park at All Saints Gate and walked to the south end (Artists Gate).  We saw the Belvedere Castle and Shakespeare's Park, walked every trail and took some photos of the tall buildings over the treetops.  

From Central Park

The Belvedere Castle in Central Park

Belvedere Castle

View from Central Park

View from Central Park

Beautiful building on the way to the subway

Then, a long subway ride back to Brooklyn.  Joshua has a 3-D New York City puzzle with all of the buildings, so he was telling us the name (and number from his puzzle!) of each one we saw!  What a silly boy.  Future architect--yeah.  Yawn!  Time for bed.