NYC Mother Daughter Trip, Day 3

Tuesday morning started with a fun breakfast at Alice's Tea Cup.  We shared some Hawaiian Dream tea.  I had a couple of fantastic scones; one was mixed berry with clotted cream while the other was a savory ham and cheese one with butter.  Lily had an omelet and potatoes.  It was all delicious.

After breakfast we walked over to the American Museum of Natural History.  This has been one of my favorite museums in the world for a long time.  I was so excited to get back and introduce this to Lily!  The dinosaur exhibits is my absolute favorite part.

There were lots of taxidermy exhibits all throughout which were so well done and showed off so many different animals.  Lily took approximately a bajillion photos (okay, fine, it was 215) of all the exhibits, but I only put a few of them in here. 

This was a fun exhibit as Polynesian music was playing, and there were all sorts of fun things to see.  We loved seeing the Easter Island statue like from the movie Night at the Museum.

Other fun exhibit pieces...

The sea life exhibit was very interesting; look at this humongous whale that took up the whole room!

After spending several hours at this museum, we decided to meander through Central Park.  It was another gorgeous day, and it was so lovely to just take our time and wander.

On the flip side of Central Park was Dylan's Candy Bar.  It was awesome!!! (and incredibly bright).

We had to try their crazy milkshakes and fun drinks.  Lily's was called "The Carnival."  It was a died blue vanilla shake with cotton candy ice cream, cotton candy, rock candy, and a sour gummy rope on it.  Mine was "The Birthday Cake."  It was a birthday cake batter flavor with chocolate sauce shake with a slice of birthday cake with tons of sprinkles on top.

I loved this wall that was downstairs.  All sorts of fun candy sorted by color.

After being stuffed at Dylan's, we walked back towards Central Park where we took a horse-drawn carriage ride through the park.  Patrick was our driver and Lucy was our horse.  It was a relaxing and fun little ride.

At the end of the ride, we got to feed Lucy some carrots.

After the carriage ride, we walked across the street to The Plaza Hotel's food hall.  It had all sorts of cool restaurant stalls.  Unfortunately, we were still stuffed from Dylan's so we didn't eat anything.

We walked back towards the hotel, but we stopped at some shops in Rockefeller Plaza on the way.  First up was American Girl.  It was huge!

After that we stopped in the Lego Store because that's always fun.

The last store was FAO Schwartz because it's an iconic store in NYC.

The Big piano!

We went back to the hotel to freshen up, and then we walked over to see Wicked.  This is such an amazing show!  It was awesome to be back on Broadway and seeing these incredible performers.  Lily loved this show and has said it was her favorite part of the trip.

Such a fantastic day!

NYC Mother Daughter Trip, Day 2

On Monday morning, we grabbed a Starbucks breakfast and then took a taxi over to the 9/11 Memorial.  You can't help but gaze up at the new Freedom Tower.  It's beautiful.

We started by viewing the fountains built on top of the former World Trade Centers which are surrounded by the names of all the individuals who died on 9/11.

This picture is the first to greet you inside the memorial.  It was taken just a few minutes before the first plane hit.  

After seeing a timeline of events from the day, you see this structure and hear people from around the world talking about what a beautiful day it was, how they heard about the attack, and what they were thinking as the day unfolded.

The iconic picture taken a little while later of all the smoke pluming into the air. 

This art piece was amazing.  There is one blue square for each person who passed away that day.  Each square represents the artist's take on all the different shades of blue.  Most people who remember the day of 9/11 specifically remember what a beautiful blue day it was, but everyone sees blue just a little bit different.

This was a replica of what was drawn on the firehouse door for the station that lost its entire company as they went to help people.

One of the fire trucks mangled from the destruction

There were several commemorative art pieces throughout the memorial, like these.

A piece of steel which was totally bent after one of the planes hit it.

I thought this was really cool.  You write a message on the board and a minute later it projects it up onto the wall with everyone else's message.  It was really neat to see all the messages, especially those in different languages; it was a good reminder that this day impacted the whole world.

Outside was the pretty Survivor's Tree.  This tree was buried in the rubble, but nursed back to health.  Today it stands as a tribute to those who survived.

After a beautiful and humbling morning at the 9/11 Memorial, we ubered over Sugar Factory.  It was super cool!  They have these huge drinks that bubble and smoke when they pour the mixture in.  Lily got the "Lollipop Passion" while I got "The Drake."

Lily had these fun and bright sliders for lunch; she loved the little souvenir ducky that came with it too.  I had a delicious burger and fries.  This was such a fun and tasty meal!

After lunch we made our way to the Staten Island Ferry Whitehall terminal.  We got to take a free ferry ride to Staten Island and back which provided fantastic views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

After the ferry ride, we decided to take a nice, slow, long walk back to our hotel.  We saw lots of neat New York City items along the way.  First up was the Friends pop up which was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the show.  Tickets sold out almost immediately so we couldn't go in, but we walked through the gift shop and saw the Central Perk set up.  We also saw one of the beautiful cathedrals from the movie National Treasure; I love that movie.

We stopped in at the Strand Bookstore because it's huge and bookstores are always awesome.  We also stopped in to see Carlo's Bakery which is owned by Buddy Valastro.  We didn't try anything but it looked delicious.

For dinner we ate at Junior's Diner; it was pretty good, and Lily loved her Dr. Brown's Cream Soda.

We ended the day at Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.  It had all sorts of fascinating oddities in it that was fun to explore.  This was a huge wall mural made out of postage stamps.

This is Lou Gerigh's famous speech that was written and drawn into a picture.

These were interesting.  The Statue of Liberty is made out of puzzle pieces while the John Lennon one is made out of dog hair.

The gorilla was made out of recycled tire pieces.  You can't help but compare your height to the world's tallest recorded man.  Lily didn't even come up his waist.

We did a ton of walking today, but it was so cool to see so much of the city.