South Africa - Day 1

Day 1 - New York City Day 1 - October 12, 2019

Now that we had been home for 5 weeks, it was time to head out on our next adventure.

The deal that I found to South Africa was from NYC, so we had to purchase separate flights to New York.  We didn't want to miss our flight to Africa, so we left a couple of days early in order to make sure that we could work around any delays.

We flew on a red-eye flight, which meant that we were out exploring rather early.  First stop was ground zero.

We had not visited the memorial as a family.  This is a special, sacred place.

Happy birthday Marie Pappalardo.

What is kosher in photos like these? Do you smile, or try to stay neutral (I obviously tried the latter).

We had tickets to the museum.  This was the first time for all of us.  It was beautiful.

I was in Voronezh, Russia on 9/11. It was early evening and we were trying to book a banya (Russian bath-house) for a baptism.  They had a TV on mute with the news playing, but we just thought it was a new movie or something. It wasn't until later that night that information started trickling in.  The biggest impact on me personally was that we stopped wearing nametags for about 6 weeks.  We were afraid of any repercussions or people looking for Americans to harass. It was a somber time, especially because we were mourning on our own, separated from the news and patriotism of most other Americans.

I do like the new freedom tower building.  Downtown NYC needed a statement building in place of the WTC towers.

Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is Angelica Schuyler's grave.

Then we found Alexander Hamilton's grave at Trinity Church.

Next, the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street.

Federal Hall, where George Washington was sworn in as President and the Bill of Rights were written.

We let the girls play at the Imagination Playground on Front Street while I bought tickets to a Broadway show.

We were all getting pretty worn out from our red-eye flight, so we made our way to midtown to check into our hotel.

Our first decent view of the Empire State Building.

Cat naps.  Much needed.

Times Square at night.

We had bought day-of tickets to Anastasia. We really liked it. It was a bit different than the movie.

Back to Times Square, for some obligatory night-time photos.

While some of us ate NYC pizza for dinner, Lyla snacked on CTC as we made our way back to our hotel for the night.

Tomorrow we spend the morning in NYC before heading to the airport for the next leg of our trip!