New York, New York....Day One...Dinosaurs, Central Park & Time Square

Well we made it to NYC...it was a long day we left Ottawa at 4pm and with the weather it took us until 2:30 AM ...despite the roads and the weather, we made it safe and sound.

A result of the long day and late night we had a late start to the day. We didn't make it out of the hotel until noon. First we had to change rooms...the Night Clerk was not the brightest lightlulb...he invited me to use the accesible counter when I checked us in...but he assigned us a non-accessible room...needless to say, last night I gave ip and just wanted to go to bed...when I got up this morning, I took stock and the room was too small. I couldn't turn my chair around in the room and couldn't get in the bathrom...so I decided that this would need to get fixed. I called down and spoke to Terry the kind little biddy of a older lady, I remember her from last time we stayed here. Anyways she came up to our room with a bellhop and had him move our luggage to an accessible room on the 5th...with the room fixed we could now head out and tackle the "Big City".

We took the shuttle to Newark, then we hopped the Air Train to Newark Airport Rail Station...purchased tickets to New York Penn Station then at Penn Station we hoped on the C line of the subway...and took the subway right to the American Museum of Natural History stop at 81st Street.

The museum was packed and unfortunately it had only one st of elevators working and the line up was huge...the museum is also renovating and a number of the exhibit areas are closed. But we did end up on the 4th floor and saw the dinosaurs! Yay! I got to see the T-Rex! Yup my trip was complete The museum had some really awesome specimens of so many types of dinosaurs. After a couple of hours I have to admit I was tired of the crowds...so we cut our visit short and headed outside.

We walked from the museum down to 72th street and Central Park West...bonus points if you know what is at that corner....the Dakota....ok...so I'm a Beatles fan....this was where John Lennon lived and was sadly shot and killed...from there we crossed the street and entered Central Park....no worries it was daylight...we walked down to Strawberry Fields....we continued through the park and walked down to the south end and exited on 8th Ave. We waled from there down to 42nd Street and over to 7th ave.....Time Square....wow!

We had dinner at Junior's in Time Square....it was good but really pricey for sandwiches...but the cheesecake was...OMG! So good. I had the Chocolate Mousse cheesecake and Peter had the Junior's Original with hot fudge sauce....Wow...The pieces were huge! And so good. Amazingly and deceptively light tasting...sadly neither of us could finish our pieces....

After dinner we walked about 14 blocks back to New York Penn Stationto hop the NJ PATH back to Newark. After spending 20 minutes trying to find the right track we ended up going to the ticket counter to ask which track we needed. It took about 45 minutes to get back to Newark Airport Rail Station and repeated the Air Train and then the hotel shuttle.

Going to turn in for an early night...we are both really tired from last night...good night y'all!

Megan & Peter