NYC Weekend - First Full Day in NYC

After our long day and arriving at our hotel at nearly 1 AM, we slept in the next morning. It was late morning before we took our first NYC subway ride and made it down to Battery Park at the south end of Manhattan.

Kai was already having a great time as he was seeing a lot of Pokémon in the park.

But besides finding Pokémon, our main objective was to take the boat to the Statue of Liberty.

This was the first time that my wife and Kai would see Lady Liberty up close. It is so much more impressive to see her in person from on the island than it is just from photos or on television.

It is also great to see the Manhattan skyline from the boat. Even on this cloudy, cool day, the view was good.

After we came back from Liberty Island, we walked through lower Manhattan. Here we are by Wall Street with Trinity Church in the background.

Then we made our way over to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Bridge is, of course, another icon of New York, but I was still surprised to see how many people were walking across.

Kai said he was scared to cross but I wanted make the walk. He was nervous the whole time and wanted to hold my hand on the entire crossing except when we took pictures.

But the long walk was worth it as some great NY pizza awaited us on the other side. We went to the famous purveyour of NY pizza, Grimaldi's, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. We had to wait about a half hour before we could be seated.

But the walk and the wait were worth it when our pizza came. We ate up this large pepperoni, mushroom and olive pizza.

We were all very hungry after the long walk and that made the pizza taste even that much more delicious. My wife said it was the best pizza she ever had.

After that we took a taxi and went to see the 9/11 Memorial. I had previously spoken to Kai that the Memorial was a solemn place and we would not be playing Pokémon there. As we approached the area, he dutifully put away his phone without me having to remind him.

While viewing the Memorial, we saw that there was no line to get into the 9/11 Museum so we decided to visit that as well. We rented headphones so we could listen to the audio tour as we walked through the museum. For those of us who lived through 9/11, we will never forget that day. For youngsters like Kai who only know of it from history books, the museum helps to tell the full story of the day.

We stayed at the museum for a couple of hours and then took a taxi to Chinatown.

Chinatown has no shortage of souvenir shops, many which have off-color items on display. Kai laughed and laughed at the t-shirts and license plates that had inappropriate words or photos on them while I tried to get him to move on.

We found a place for dinner. We were not very hungry as our pizza lunch was quite late. Kai had soup, my wife enjoyed a noodle dish, I had crispy duck, and we shared some dumplings. The dumplings were great but the duck was more soggy than crispy and frankly, the duck I had in Michigan was much better than this one in Chinatown.

Kai and I ended our day by walking over to Little Italy to get some cannoli while my wife got a foot massage back in Chinatown. We did get her a cannoli and double espresso, and we all enjoyed our dessert back at the hotel. (It is hard to see, but that is a cannoli in Kai's right hand).

So despite our late start, we were able to do a lot. During our long wait the day before, we were thinking whether we would go home and try to fly the next day instead. But because we endured, we were able to see and do as much as we did.