This month has been a bit of a whirlwind.  My friend,  whom I’ve been friends with since I was about 15 months old, came to visit with her family for a couple of weeks from the UK.  With the distance between us, we obviously don’t see each other often so I was really looking forward to this.  I am very fortunate to have her friendship, she is one of those people that are true friends.  Never any judging, just complete acceptance and support.  She is just a lovely person.  I also count her wonderful husband as a very old friend.  The funny thing is our children share the same names so you can bet it got a little confusing having everyone together!

We packed in loads of adventures into the two weeks they were here.  The kids were introduced to the massive sized ice creams, root beer floats, and New York style pizza.  I fear there was a withdrawal from the newfound root beer habit.  

The highlight of the visit was the trek to NYC.  Given the time of year I do wish that we had portable air conditioning units to carry with us.  The concrete jungle definitely gives off the heat waves!  This visit was a whirlwind tour of the more popular sites. Good thing we had excellent trainers!  

Grand Central is a great place to start the adventure.  It’s such an amazing building and thankfully it was restored rather than suffering the fate that Penn Station had.  Their son is a massive train fan so this was such a treat for him.  

We started in Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty.  Apparently you have to book tickets 3 months in advance to go up it.  To be honest I remember doing that as a child and the time it takes to get up to the top doesn’t make it worth it.  We wandered to the World Trade Center and the memorial there.  The memorial was incredibly moving, they really did it well.  Despite the crowds it’s a peaceful spot.  What got me the most was that they put a white rose on the names when it is the person’s birthday.  

My son, who had visited there with school, said we had to go straight up to the new World Trade Center building.  Then look straight up.  A very cool view.  The way they designed it, looks like it goes on forever.

As this was proving a very hot afternoon I suggested the next stop be Little Italy for refreshments.  

Cannoli and cocktails are very restorative don’t you know.  There is nothing like a well prepared cannoli.  This gave us enough energy to get through the queues to the top of the Empire State Building.  We timed it so by the time we got to the top the sun was going down.  It was insanely crowded at the top but we were able to get some great views.

Not bad for a first day.  The next day was museum day in a bid to keep cool.  For some reason I had yet to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I’m really glad we went, what an amazing museum.  There is something for everyone and their collections are extensive.  Because we didn’t have an endless amount of time we had to pick and choose what we wanted to see.  I would love to go back again.

We ended up spending most of the day there so we had to briskly walk across Central Park as we had promised a visit to the Natural History Museum.  

I hadn’t been in this part of the park before and the flowers and pond were really pretty.  As luck would have it, we emerged from the park right at the museum.  Unfortunately we discovered we only had two hours before it closed.  We were impressed by the greeters, though I wouldn’t mess with them, given the size of their teeth!

Because of the movie “Night at the Museum” we had to go see Dum Dum.  For those that haven’t seen the movie, it is a large Easter Island head.  I asked a guide where the Easter Island head was and he looked confused until I said Dum Dum.  So you can imagine how many parents are dragged there by their children!  Though given the cool stuff there it’s not much of a hardship.

After including Times Square, cheesecake and Gulliver’s Gate, we were very tired on the trip back.  All in all it was a very successful trip and loads of fabulous memories were made.