NYC - Day 4

The Sister in law and brother in law were leaving this morning. :-( The hubby and I had tickets to see The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island…very touristy outings, but hey, we’re tourists, right? Besides, neither of us had seen either up close.

Yes, I am acting like a tourist and taking pictures on the subway.

Starbucks in hand...that's how I roll.

I have to say, I am so happy we decided to see both – I loved learning all about what went into building the Statue of Liberty and the fundraising campaign that went into the US being able to build the base for Lady Liberty. Plus, the views of Manhattan were amazing from this vantage point, too. Ellis Island was incredibly interesting. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like to come to the US from another country, not knowing the language and in some cases, not knowing anyone here. The stories about families being reunited (or in some cases not, due to health issues) were touching.

I think this is my favorite picture of the Statue of Liberty..I can certainly see why she's called "Liberty Enlightening the World". 

I was amazed at how beautiful the building on Ellis Island was. 

After our tours, we decided to walk around a bit and visit TriBeCa and some other areas. We couldn’t decide if we wanted to try to catch a show that evening or check out one of the museums. In the couple of times I’ve been to NYC, I’ve never been to any of the museums. We decided to wander around a little more, grab some lunch and then check out the Guggenheim. The Gugg is a smaller than say, the Museum of Natural History, so we figured it be a good one to see by the time we ate lunch and check out some other places, it would be getting late. We ate lunch at a place in SoHo called Divas. I was also on a mission to find at least one of the cupcakes places on my list, so we headed to the West Village and went to Sweet Revenge. At the recommendation of the not so friendly girl at the counter, I chose a Pumpkin Spice cupcake. It was divine! Sweet Revenge is on a slightly edgier street and the location used to be a record shop (you know, as in vinyl). And, we happened upon Molly’s cupcakes right around the corner, so naturally, we had to stop there as well. Molly’s was a super cute shop, with super cute cupcakes in a wide array of flavors, so I chose a mini-Kaluha cupcake and the Ron-Bennington. Both were yummy, but I still think Sweet Revenge had the better cupcake – moist cake, delicious icing and just amazing flavor on both. Yum!

This is "The Sphere". It was once sitting between the Twin Towers, but after the 9/11 attacks it was salvaged and now sits in Battery Park.



This is Occupy Wall Street.  It's not as big as it looks on TV.  I will say nothing else on this topic.



Strolling around TriBeCa..too bad we didn't run into Bobby DeNiro!

Heavenly cupcakes from Sweet Revenge in the West Village!

After getting our cupcakes, we headed back to the apartment to drop them off and headed to the Guggenheim. I’ll admit, I wanted to go to the Gugg just as much for the architecture as I did for the art. I enjoyed seeing the Kandinsky exhibit and the Pop Objects and Icons exhibit, but the Maurizio Cattelan exhibit was just a bit odd for my taste. Once we finished at the Gugg, we headed back to the apartment to freshen up for dinner…and hold onto your hats, we had MEXICAN for dinner. We swore we’d never eat Mexican food or Barbeque in NYC. (If you’re from Texas, you understand.) But we went between steak and Mexican and somehow, Mexican won…maybe it was the reviewer’s promise of a great margarita? Dinner was not quite Tex-Mex like we’re used to, but it was really good. And the margarita’s…well, they were delicious! It was the perfect way to end the day. Well that, and a little more shopping for the kiddos.

The Guggenheim