It's all a blur...

Ever flown somewhere just for the day? I'm not talking about flying in the night before, having a day at your destination, and flying back. No. I mean fly in and out in the same day. Most sane people probably wouldn't attempt to do this, not unless your destination was somewhere like Timmons ON, where there would be a high likelihood that you could see most of it in one day. But what about someplace like New York City? Okay, so aparently my family is insane, because that is what we did this weekend. My parents, my sister and her finacee and I flew to NYC at 8 am and flew home at 8 pm (well 10 pm because the flight was delayed). Are we crazy??

Crazy or not, it was a lot of fun and extremely tiring. The day started very early. Up at 5 am to be out the door at 6:15 am to be at the airport to catch the flight at 8:30 am. We landed in NYC just before 10 and by the time we got off the plane, checked in for the flight home and made our way to Grand Central Terminal, it was nearly 11 am.

From there we split up, the boys went to the MET while the girls went shopping to find mom a dress to wear to my wedding in Sept. The shopping leg of our trip was a bust! First we went to Filene's basement, thinking they would have designer dresses on the cheap. However, they had NO dresses! None at all! That was a huge disappointment. From there we went to TJ Maxx which was just upstairs, and they didn't have much either. We decided to head up to Macy's. On the way there we stopped in at the Burlington Coat Factory. Mom tried on a few things, but nothing worked.

Then we saw a David's Bridal and thought we'd check that out. We did not expect to not be able to wander the store and just see what was around. You had to be escorted around by a consultant. So annoying! And since we are polite Canadians mom tried on a bunch of dresses even though she didn't like any of them. By this time it was getting close to lunch so we used that as an excuse to leave the store, finally! But we did not have enough time to still go to Macy's and meet the boys for lunch at the Empire State Building.

Lunch was at Sbarro's at the base of the Empire State Building. Basically, it is a pizza joint with a salad bar. We all had a slice of pizza that wasn't very good, in fact, it was only luke warm. So far the day wasn't turning out as we had hoped.

After lunch we took a cab down to Battery Park to catch the ferry to take us to Liberty isl and Ellis isl. The ferry was fun, we had a great spot to see everything, and even though dad lost his sunglasses overboard, it was probably the best part of the day.

Dad with sunglasses.... and without!

Our first stop, Liberty Isl. On the island we each got an audio tour. The amout of American patriotic propaganda on the audio tour would have been funny if it weren't so annoying. It was like they were tryng ot make you weep with American pride or something, but if you aren't american, it does nothing. I ended up skipping most of it, and as a result, I skipped the only part that I would have found interesting... the architecture and engineering of her.
Just as we stepped back on the boat to head over to Ellis Isl. there was a sudden downpour. We were happy that we decided to stay inside near the door instead of out on the deck like we had on the way over. Because of the rain and becuase that audio tour took so long, we decided not to get off the ferry at Ellis Isl. Instead we just saw it from the boat. When we got back to the main land we walked up to Ground Zero to have a look.

Then tried the NYC Subway system to get up to Times Square.

We spend a whole 10 min in Times Square before it was time to head back over to Grand Central Terminal to catch the bus back to the airport and head home.