New York City

Wednesday, July 11th, 2001

There sure is a lot of New York City!

We took on traveling on our own today - a big step!  To get to the Intrepid Air and Space museum, we took the PATH train, two subways (that we had never been on!) and a new bus route!

The Intrepid is an aircraft carrier that was built in 1943, hit by so many Japanese attacks that they called it 'The Ghost Ship', was rebuilt in the '50's, was used as a space shot recovery craft, and finally served in Vietnam.  It was decommisioned and finally was bought privately to be made a museum.

It is an excellent site to see. 

In front of the Intrepid aircraft carrier
USS Edson Destoyer The inside of the carrier is a museum and there are aircraft all over the flight deck (including an A-12).  Besides the aricraft carrier, there is a destroyer and a cruise missile submarine open for tours. A-12 on the carrier's flight deck
Then it was back to Central Park -- in a vain attempt to satiate Patti Sue's appetite for this park.
In Central Park We walked through the Park and hit a playground and sat on some rocks.  I made an off-hand remark about finding the statue of Balto (from the movie of the same name).
We met Pat & Pam back at Pam's work overlooking Times Square.  We had to look online to find the directions to the Balto statue.  Then it was off again to the park.
Do you know where you're going? We got so good at navigating around the city that Pat and Pam let us figure out how to get back to Central Park to find the Balto statue. It's hard to make it out in the picture, but the kids are sitting on the statue of the sled dog that the Balto movie was made after. We finally found Balto!
An interesting note is that someone overheard us talking about the statue on the bus and we had two different people telling us how to get there and all about the statue.

After the statue we rode the subway back to 33rd St., where we dragged out our last moments with Pat & Pam on this visit.

This was after our last ride on the PATH train.  We all thought Patti Sue was going to miss having the train in the picture, but she wanted it moving fast.  This is a really good picture! Patti Sue's favorite picture!
The last taxi ride topped them all.  As we got in, the driver said, "Okay, who's going to pay for this trip?"  He pointed at Joe.  "You?"  We all agreed this was a good idea.  Mandy said, "He's got lots of money!"  So Joe counted his $34.50 while the driver said, "No, Joe, you gotta watch the meter!  The meter, Joe!"  Throughout the five blocks he'd try various tactics ("Hey, Joe, I don't carry change, we round up!" - "Hey, it's this much PER PERSON, JOE!") and each time he'd emphasize, "No, Joe, it's the METER - go by the METER!"

We paid him much more than the meter, while WE explained 'tipping' to Joe.

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