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Since I was a wee little girl I had dreams. I am not talking about my dreams of Danny Devito in a tutu, riding a unicorn taking an elevator that suddenly blows up. No. Not those.

I am talking more specifically about moving to NYC, working at various low end jobs just to get by, frequently comedy clubs until I get discovered, being invited to audition for SNL, Lorne Michaels thinking I was better than Tina Fey because hey, I am a fellow Canadian and then living it up, making hilarious movies and eventually having a family that vacations with Adam Sandler's in Hawaii.

Well, I got to experience a tiny part of that dream. Little Dragon, Big Guy and I went to NYC. Since we live in Ottawa and it's a 8 hour drive to the City of Dreams, we figured we will make a couple of trips over the next three years. Why not, right?

A toll bridge we had to pay $2.75 to drive over to get to the USA border. It was by 1000 Island Park (like the salad dressing). It was such a beautiful area, I would love to come back in the late spring/summer here.

This time we wanted to hit every major family friendly "tourist" attraction so that the next time we go, Little Dragon will be old enough to stay with some church family friends and Big Guy and I can go to the more adult attractions (namely a Broadway show, visit a comedy club and fingers crossed an SNL taping or at least Jimmy Falon).

Little Dragon curiously peering out the train window.

Now driving more than an hour with Little Dragon can potentially be a nightmare as he is not a big fan of his carseat (unless we drive late at night or early, early in the morning when he is sleeping the majority of the trip). I planned that we would catch the Amtrax train in Syracuse, NY, this way we only had to drive 3 hours to Syracuse and then take the train, just under 6 hours to Penn Station in New York City.

Having a little snooze with daddy.

The train made it so we could hold Little Dragon and walk around with him when he grew fussy, making it less stressful for everyone. It was fairly inexpensive as well as both Big Guy and I, there and back to NYC was only $220 (Dragon being free until he's 2), making it perhaps just a tad more than it would be for gas for our Focus. Plus, it eliminates the stress of driving and parking in the big city, which enviably is invaluable.

We saw a lot of this on the train.

The last couple of hours we saw more of this. We moved alongside the Hudson River for the majority of the trip. Those distant "mountains" are I  believe are part of the Catskill mountain range, south of Albany, NY.

Sunset falling on New Jersey. We are getting close!!!

I booked our hotel on Priceline and lucked out with getting one a block away from Penn Station. It couldn't have been in a better location as it was on the most southern end of the Fashion District, making it a 5 minute walk to the Empire State Building and 15 minutes to Times Square. The hotel is called Affinia and is practically across the street from Madison Square Gardens.

Over the past year they had renovated the rooms to a more modern look. I made sure to get a room on the 22nd floor as I had read that the higher up you are the less traffic noise. We still heard sirens almost every night, I couldn't imagine what it would have been like on the 6th floor as that was our original room.

I was amazed how easily it was to walk places, everything was literally less than an hour away. The streets were short and the avenues were maybe double the length.

The train ride was fun, fairly uneventful so that's good. Little Dragon for the most part was easy going. Near the end of the ride, probably the last hour, he wanted to be held (in the standing position, it's amazing how babies just go nuts as soon as a parent sits down) and Big Guy was great at calming the Dragon as he walked up and down the aisles. Little Dragon seriously brings joy to anyone that sees him and brought a lot of smiles to the faces of the train passengers. At the end of the ride there someone commented on how well-behaved Little Dragon was. Phew!

I didn't know that there are so many stupid city names in the state of New York. Seriously. If you don't believe me, I will give you a little quiz and you can tell me how well you perfomed.

Which name is not a name of a city/town in the state of New York:

a) Poughkeepsie
b) Lewisville
c) Mexico
d) Synecdoche
e) Amersterdam
f) Yonkers
g) Rome

I will give you the answer at the end of this blog post.

We get off the train and are immediately overwhelmed by noise and people, confused on how to get to ground level, let alone exit the building.

When people try to tell you all New Yorkers are rude and couldn't be bothered to help someone...that's false. Completely false. So many people helped us out on this trip. For heaven's sake, a lady started to run after a receipt of the lunch we purchased that flew out of the stroller's base compartment. I had to yell at her not to bother chasing it on the busy streets because it was garbage to us anyhow. In Penn Station a service man who was delivering packages went out of his way to show us where the elevators were to get to the street. Thank you random guy!

Immeditely when we started walking towards our hotel, I pointed to a tall building and said "Look Dave, that's the Empire State Building." He asked me if I was sure. Hey, I've watched enough An Affair to Remember, Sleepless in Seattle and Gossip Girl to know what the Empire State Building looks like. 

We snooped through our hotel room and then headed towards Times Square. On our walk over there we ran into a very tanned and botoxed Channel 2 NYC weatherman. He asked "How are you folks doing tonight?" We told him we were doing well and he asked us what we thought of the weather. David answered him quickly, "We came here to escape the cold. We are Canadian. This is tropical!" Hardy har har. I just wanted to touch his plastic face.

We walked around Times Square for a bit which was a stimulus overload for Lil Dragon. At home, we try not to have him look at monitors, whether it's the television, phone, or computer. We figure he is going to get enough of that during his lifetime that we might as well give him a break for now, plus Health Canada doesn't recommend children under the age of two to watch any T.V. Makes sense. So you can only imagine how large Dragon's eyes got when he was bombarded with easily over 1000 advertisements and many large plasma screens spewing their bright lights everywhere he turned.

Batman had a bigger gut than Little Dragon.

We were walking through the Times Square Area and a sketchy African American handed David a CD and started talking to him. I told Big Guy to give it back to the guy and keep walking. The fellow then said "Hey man, this is my music. Are you his mother? Are you going to listen to her?" I was like, "Yeah stupid, I'm his mother!" Shortly after this incident I had a little chat with Big Guy about taking things from strangers. The key is to keep walking and give a quick little "No, thank you" to whatever they are saying. Big Guy learned this fast and was able to practice it a lot of the duration of the trip until he had it mastered.

We grabbed some guacamole at a Mexican chain called Chipotle and then stopped in a dinner called Potbellys for some soup and sandwich action that happened to be "Open Mic" night and a cool, hipster was playing his acoustic guitar like a mad man. So good! Big Guy wanted to grab a little something at many, many restaurants on our trip. He didn't want to purchase any souvenirs, he just wanted to experience the food as much as possibly.

He sang some pretty sweet Prince renditions.

Before going to sleep, I peered out the window of our hotel room to get one last glance at the Empire State Building just to remind myself of where I was resting for the night. It was SOOO cool! I had to pinch myself a few times during our trip.

The next day was Thursday and started the day with a semi-circle Cruise of the bottom half of the island. It was very informative and we were spoiled with views of the skylines of both Manhattan and New Jersey, went under both the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan bridge, and of course got to pay our respect to Lady Liberty. We were not able to actually walk on the island because the walkways were still under construction from hurricane Sandy. From the skyline we saw the Freedom Tower, Chrystler Building, the port where the Titanic was suppose to dock on (which is now, oddly enough, a golf driving range), and the United Nations building just to name a few. It was fairly frigid and windy out and so the pictures outside of the heated cabin were taken quickly and you may notice Little Dragon looking at us like "Are you guys serious!?"

See the outdoor driving range cage?

 

Big Guy and the Brooklyn Bridge. Top video of Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge.

Then we walked back towards our hotel to go up, up, up to the Empire State Building.

Good old America and their national security inspected us fully before we could proceed to the top. We had to take apart our stroller and stuff both the car seat and the stroller part through their scanner machine. It was worse than the airport when Little Dragon and I flew to Ottawa.

We went there around 4pm so we could get pictures of the city in daylight, sunset and night. The thing about the Empire State building, is that it is set up like a fast food business, they want you to pay your money, take your pictures and get out of there. There is nowhere to sit and relax, so I ended up nursing Dragon on the floor and had a security guard come over and tell me there was no sitting allowed. Big Guy told him what I was doing and glared him off. Really people?! Then on our way out, Little Dragon made a massive poo-like sound and we wanted to hit-up a bathroom asap. The pharmacy on the main level told us that they didn't have bathrooms, but to try to go up the next floor and ask for a manager to let us in a bathroom. We did just that and had several people come out of nowhere to tell us we were mistaken and that there is no bathroom. So we went back to the pharmacy to find three security men talking on their silly little phones about this situation, waiting for us to leave the building. "Try the McDonalds across the street", one of them tells us. Good work Empire State building! Real classy. I really won't recommend going to the Empire State building if you have kids and/or a baby. But as you can see, we really built it up to be something spectacular. The building itself is, but unfortunately the experience and the militant people inside, are not.

Looking South towards the Financial District.

The Chrysler building.

Two penguins, hanging out. No big deal.

FYI: We did "Top of the Rock" at the Rockerfeller building a few days later. WAAAY better experience!!! Many padded benches, classical music playing in the background and just as nice views!

The rest of the night we walked up 5th Avenue to see what Sak's is really all about. We stopped at a little restaurant and got New York pizza and cheesecake. Yum! Big Guy hauled around Little Dragon and the women working the perfume counter in Sak's went nuts over him. One African American women, after seeing me, said "Oh you two look like brother and sister." "Gross" I said. I guess to her all white people look alike. Needless to say, we did not buy anything there. It was too rich for our family blood anyways. ($650 for some flat, nude colored Jimmy Choo shoes).

Pretty sweet public library, right?

Pizza time!

Little bald Batboy.

This was our first 24 hours in NYC. It wasn't a "relaxing" vacation, but it sure was fun.
The Next Part to Come.....

Answer: B) Lewisville!! Yeah I know. Mexico, NY is legit!

On the train. They both were good travelers.