New York City

On Friday, we rode a Greyhound bus to New York City. Getting to the bus station was quite a challenge. We had metro transfers, our metro tickets wouldn't even work at first, and it wasn't until Mom said, "We're dumb, we're from Utah," that the metro station guy was even nice to us, but then he did give us passes to get us from point A to point B.

I took tons of pictures on the way up, and hardly slept at all, which I was surprised at. The time change was weird and we were on the bus by 8:00 a.m., so I'd been up since 5:30 (3:30 our time).

This is Baltimore, MD

We got to New York City and met up with one of my best friends, Amy Nicholas, and her sister Kari. They came down from Boston. The first thing we did was eat at Chevy's. It was pretty good. After that we just walked around wanting to see the sights before our appointment to do a session at the Manhattan Temple at 8:30. Our first stop was Ground Zero. What a humbling, but beautiful experience! The devastation was horrific, but seeing the way the people were honored (Ladder 10 Fire department) and the way the development is coming along, to see that the New Yorkers, the Americans could overcome something like that was beautiful!

We went to see Rockefeller Center. We wanted to get to the ice skating rink, so we had to go through the building to get there. As we were walking through, we just happened to run into Amy's and Kari's cousin-in-law, Gil. He works there, but really what is the chance in a city of 9,000,000 people we would run into him. He was so funny, and so excited to see them. He took us up to the "Top of the Rock." It was amazing! I got some pretty cool pictures.

Central Park. Next time I go, I'm going to spend time here.

The four of us with the Empire State building behind us. Kari and I should've been in front, since we were shortest.

The City
Then we went to Times Square. It was so funny to be there in the place we see on tv and to really be there, was so fun. I couldn't live there, but it was a really fun place to visit. We went to a cute little cafe for dinner, and then headed to the temple, we missed our appointment, but still spent time there.

I borrowed this from the Church website, because when we got there it was way too dark for good pictures.

Then we spent $60+ on a taxi to our hotel, which cost us only $2.50 on the way back on a bus. Oh well, we didn't know what we were doing. It was so much fun! I absolutely loved it! The people were not like how they portray them on tv, yes they were walking swiftly from place to place, but everyone we talked to was so nice and helpful! It wouldn't have been the same had we not run into Gil. He and his wife were so welcoming!