It's Soooo BIG!

Wow!  We have had quite a fun day in the big city!

It turns out that there is a train station about 1 block from our hotel that takes us into the heart of Manhattan - it makes it extremely easy to get around.  So, this morning, we headed to the city on the train.  We arrived at Penn Station, and made our way up from the underground to street level.  You should have seen Alyssa's face when she saw the city - all she could say was, "It's so BIG!"  We spent all day walking the city before taking the train back to our hotel.  We could easily spend another week and still not do all we would like to.

Today we took in the following sites:

First, the Empire State Building - we took the "SkyRide", which is a virtual helicopter tour of city - Alyssa loved it - I nearly lost my breakfast!  After the ride, we went up to the observation deck - what an amazing view - we took lots of pictures.  While we were there, we had to wait about 20 minutes to get to the south side because the star of Wicked was there for a photo shoot...we snuck a few pics of our own.

Next, we headed north up Fifth Avenue - we saw Saks, the New York Library, and Rockefeller Center.  

After that, we headed to Times Square - the highlight of which was definitely the M&M store - who knew such a little candy could have such a huge store - 3 floors!  Alyssa had a blast!

Finally, we walked through the theatre district on our way back to Penn Station.

It sure doesn't sound like a lot when I write it out, but we spent hours on our feet, it took all day, and there is still so much we want to see - like, Central Park, Museum of Natural History, the Statue of Liberty, and if possible, a showing of The Lion King.  Alyssa and I are both thinking we will definitely need to come back some day!

Tomorrow is our big day of tests - we start about 11, and we expect to be done by about 3.  Not sure what we will do after that - maybe the Statue of Liberty, depending on what time we get done.