NEW YORK CITY - April 11th, 12th & 13th

So its Sunday night and we are heading to Alex’s house in Astoria just outside of NY city… Brian and her are so nice enough to let us crash on their couches… Alex thank you for the map and the T-shirts it made our trip into NY city wonderful, your little tips helped out soooooo much and we were able to enjoy the city more…. Our first day we spent it mostly in downtown Manhattan, seeing the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island (soooo much history I didn’t know about)which both of my grandparents parents passed through from the Portugal/Azores Islands …. It almost brought tears to my eyes so see something that my ancestors had to go through for a better life here in the States…. WTC memorial was speechless and seeing the Fire Station Engine Co. 10 that was right across from the Trade Center’s….. chris and I took a moment and I think for him it was a sad moment of the loss of “his fire brothers” and then turned the corner to see the memorial set up representing every emergency personal on the wall and witnessed a NYFD firefighter on his knees taking a few minutes to pay his respects to one of his “Brothers” and just looking down at the ground and then looked up at where the towers should have been and it seemed like he was on another plant just wishing things were different…. It makes me thank god more for what Chris and every Firefighter, police officer, EMT and any other public servant how puts others first before their safety…. THANK YOU …………… so after that we stopped by an Irish Pub that was right around the corner from the Fire house and it was filled with patches from all over, mostly Fire but there were some Police…… oh we did so much on this day I cant remember it all …. we hit the financial district, took a picture with the bull, visited time square, Chrysler building, Grande Central Station (Gorgeous), Rockefeller Plaza, Empire State building(we went up to the 86th floor), mmmmm I think that’s about it……
Day two was the day chris planned, we tried to wake up early to make the Today show but going to bed at 3am just makes you want to sleep in even more… so we slept in and made our way to lunch reservations at the Boathouse in Central Park… Amazing food and atmosphere.... that’s when I realized I forgot my ring in the hotel, ooopppsss fire me now, we did the paddle boats and then went back to the hotel which was only like 3 blocks away to get my ring and finish the day with a carriage ride through the park. We ended the night with dinner at Planet Hollywood, which was our romantic dinner night in Disneyworld last year… so it fit the occasion…. Then he surprised me with tickets to my first Broadway show…. The phantom of the Opera… I loved it…… after the show we walked back to Time Square and enjoyed the night and watched the building lights change every 5 seconds

Oh how I love this city… on our last day in NYC we spent shopping and finishing up all of the touristy things… We tried to be on the Today show again but missed the last outdoor taping by 5 minutes. We stayed out on the streets for a couple of more segments when someone from the show came up to us and asked if we wanted to be on a with Kathy Lee and Hota in the 10:30 segment about taxes…. Chris and I looked at each other and said sure… Later to find out we were one of 9 groups to be asked a question and they ran out of time before they got to us… so needless to say we got to be apart of a live taping with Kathy lee but never made it to National TV : ( … the experience was fun and we will always have the memories…. From there we went to the Chelsea Market and had a sample of the best banana pudding every... We then jumped back on the subway to Chinatown to experience the Black market… It was an eye opening experience let me tell you… Our first experience was nuts… When you walked up the streets of Chinatown you hear guys quietly saying “purse, purse, coach, Louie, Rollex, etc”. and by the great advice from chirs’s cousin Nick, those are they ones that have all the knock off items for sale… I guess it was a bad time for selling since there were lots of cops around we found a black guy who then told us to follow him and meet him across the street… we followed and then he asked what we wanted and of course I wanted Coach… he said give him a second and he had to go check with one of his “brothers” …. We waited for about 5 minutes he came back and said things are hard right now and that we should go into the restaurant and order a soda and he would be back … we waited another 5-8 minutes and he was back but not with Coach … Apparently coach is harder to get on the black market and he only could get Louie right now… he gave me a folded up paper which had like 50 designs on it and told me to pick which one I liked… he then went back and got two purses from who know where because we were on the street and not in a store… he really wanted to make a sale but the purses weren’t what I wanted and we walked away… felt like a very bad drug deal . Chris and I tried it again before we headed back to our hotel to pick up our things and get on the road…. This time we went with the Chinese … Way better luck… we were in and out in less than 5 minutes… the guy did the whole talk thing and before I knew what I was getting myself into we were walking down a small walkway to a store deep in an ally way with other stores around it… the guy said some stuff in Chinese to a lady and she pointed up to the next store and as soon as we walked into her store she was opening up locked cabinets and pulling out purses right and left and shoving them into a black bag… all the while everyone else is looking out for cops and as for me Im trying to take my time with everything not thinking about how illegal it is … Finally I made my selection and the doors closed quickly and chris and I were on our way…. I have never shopped that fast in my life… I had to re look in the bag once we got on the subway just to see what purses I ended up with…. So in all if your ever in NYC and in Chinatown I highly recommend shopping at the black market stores just for the stories you can tell later on....

after a long 3 days it was time to get on the subway and make our exit out of the city to pick up Nancy... It was sad to leave but im for sure coming back soon.... its off to Washington DC from here....

Amanda