The BIG city!

By Mom of TJB and MMB October 25, 2014

Walking down 5th Ave with Uncle Dan

Start spreading the news

I am leaving today

I want to be a part of it

New York, New York

These vagabond shoes

Are longing to stray

Right through the very heart of it

New York, New York

- Frank Sinatra

Uncle Dan turned the big 2-7 last weekend and so the whole Pastorius family flew out to celebrate. This is the last of our travels this year as momma's belly is getting bigger and so pretty soon they won't let her on and taking me on airplanes alone is more challenging when you can't bend over and pick up all my fallen toys on the ground. It was Auntie Anne, Uncle Eric, and Grandpa's first time to the big apple (and mine too) and we had lots of fun walking around the "New York BIIIIGGGG City" as I affectionately refer to it. Dan is in his third year of medical school doing rotations at St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, NY, so we rendezvous-ed in Times Square on Friday night after a 5-hour flight. Mommy let watch the Disney movie, Cars, and two Thomas the Train movies on the iPad and Daddy let me borrow his Bose headphones so I was quite content (thankfully).

Getting comfy on the airplane with my iPad and headphones.

It was a long day of travel but we arrived to the hotel on the 40th floor overlooking Times Square and I was gitty! All those signs and taxis and buses and people, oh my! I finally fell asleep around midnight and we all slept in the next day.

After a leisurely breakfast, we headed to Grand Central Station and I was excited to ride on underground trains. The station had so many trains!! We headed down, down, down and down some more to the subway and took the 4 line to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Grandpa, Uncle Dan, Grandma, Auntie Annie and Uncle Eric in Grand Central Station

We walked across (well Grandpa carried me most the way because there were too many people) and ate Grimaldi's pizza at the park under the bridge. Mommy and Auntie ate ice cream from the Brooklyn Bridge Ice Cream Factory and they shared some with me, too.

Yum! PIZZA!

That night, they left me at the hotel with a stranger from "Macalester" to babysit while they went to see "Book of Mormon." I was hysterical for only five minutes, latching onto mom's leg and trying to not let her go but I tearfully gave her a kiss goodbye and the babysitter was cool and I was quickly distracted.

The next morning we met up with mommy's friend, Prachi, at a french bakery, Maison Kayser, on the the Upper East Side and then headed to Central Park where two more of mommy's friends, Anastasia and Sarah, met us. We were nine adults and one toddler wandering around NYC but luckily we has our local tour guides. We explored the Central Park Zoo and I got kisses from the goats.

Then, we had a picnic lunch (with delicious NY bagels) at Rockefeller University overlooking the East River. After lunch, we took a big gondola car/tram over the river to Roosevelt Island and walked to the new FDR Four Freedoms Park with views of the "BIG CITY!" We were exhausted at this point and the sun was setting so we took a taxi back to the hotel, gathered our things and it was time to say goodbye. I had a few tears (and so did mommy and Grandma and Grandpa) as I didn't want them to go "bye-bye". We were having so much fun! Alas, Mommy and I had to go as her friend, Kenny, was letting us stay with him in Queens.

On Monday, we explored Flushing Meadow-Corona Park with Kenny and saw the big 12-story Unisphere from the World's Fair in 1964. We walked around Astoria and the Socrates Sculpture Park before heading back to JFK Airport for another 5-hour flight back to Seattle. It was a whirl-wind weekend but fun to hang out with the Pastorius gang and meet Mommy's friends. Who knows when we'll all be together again (and how many more of us there will be!)