My notes on NY

Dear Husband and I were in NY last week to visit his brother and sister-in-law. We stayed in the apartment of DH's sister-in-law's sister's partner on Staten Island. The owner of the apartment only stayed there a few nights a week because she mostly lived somewhere else and graciously volunteered the use of her apartment during our visit.

Here I am in the apartment. One thing we learned about NYC is that everything is smaller (and more expensive). Notice the tiny refrigerator. We liked the ad on the front of it, too. It says "Cooking's more fun in a gay kitchen." Also notice my straight hair. My sister-in-law (who works in a salon, as does brother-in-law) blow dried it for me. It stayed that stick-straight for days (until I had to wash it). SiL and BiL are buying a house, so a lot of their stuff is already packed. They did not have a spray bottle, so she dampened my hair with water from a glass before she dried it straight for me.

Here is the view of the NY skyline from Staten Island.

You also can see a few buildings in Jersey, but no one knows what they are because they are in Jersey.

It was cold and rainy when we were in New York ... except for the day we left. The first full day we were there, we went to the Bronx Zoo.

I wanted to see the black leopards. DH wanted to see the penguins. We got to the zoo four hours before it closed, and it is a big zoo, so it was getting close to the time the zoo closed, and we still hadn't see the penguins. We went in one bird house and felt hopeful as the air inside started to get cooler as we walked past some tropical aquatic birds. Then we came to the puffins ... then the exit. No penguins. But then we saw another bird house. Finally penguins. We've seen better penguins, as BiL commented. But it was a nice zoo. DH attracted butterflies in the butterfly house, and we rode the bug carousel.

On our last day in NY, we walked around the World Trade Center site and walked down Wall Street. We also went inside Trinity Church/St. Paul's Chapel. There were grave stones in its little cemetery from the Revolutionary War. Alexander Hamilton was buried there. Many of the stones were so weathered that their names no longer could be read. It was quiet and peaceful in the church, quite a contrast from the noise just outside the doors. We got a hot dog from a vender for $1 on Wall Street.

This was taken across the street from the World Trade Center site. You can see the gap where there should be buildings.

Here is the World Trade Center site. It looks like two square holes. It is kind of hard to take a picture of. There is not much there. There are construction workers getting it ready for the new tower and memorial.

This sculpture was in the courtyard of the church.

Here we are on Wall Street.

Here is DH looking sad because he does not compare favorably to, um, the bull. But we took some regular tourist photos, too.

Here I am in the subway station looking a little apprehensive, first, because I am standing next to severed fingers; second, because DH doesn't really know how to use my camera; and third, I was a little worried he would back right off the platform onto the tracks. (See how straight my hair still is!)

We didn't buy very many souvenirs while we were in NY. DH complained about being cold while we were there, so he bought a new coat in a department store. We got some magnets and postcards. We also bought the CD soundtrack to "Avenue Q." My sister-in-law also got cold while we were walking around, so we went into Century 21 (which, I confess, I did not know was a department store) so she could buy a hat. I bought these slippers (notice how one foot is the cat head and the other is the cat butt) and some slipper socks with fuzzy gray cats on them. Our dog tried to bite the cats off the first time she saw them.