One Really Big Apple

 

Living in rural America has one really big disadvantage in that it is time consuming to go to major metropolitan areas on either coast. They inevitably involve a transfer at some major hub along the way and based on recent years experiences, those transfers times shift around at the airlines whim between purchasing the ticket and the day of the flight, sometimes leaving uncomfortably short windows of time to complete the transfer where when you bought it, it had been a comfortable amount of time. However, our local "urban jungle" airport has been expanding in recent years and not long ago obtained a regular direct flight to New York City, a place I've been too a couple times on business but never explored much. With the kids home from school for the summer, we purchased four of those tickets and set off.

Above, after managing the mass transit system of a bus and subway, is where we ended up for our stay, sandwiched on the 33rd floor of a building right next to Grand Central station which you can see in lower right portion of the photo, and the Chrysler building behind us which you can also see in the reflection of the office building beyond Grand Central station. We were only about six or seven blocks from Times Square and the theater district and right next door to a huge hub to utilize for transportation. 

With the afternoon still young, we set out to get a lay of the land.

Eight blocks away we found St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Rockefeller Plaza. 

We also dipped into Times Square but I couldn't bring myself to digitally record the gaudiness of the place. Plus I was afraid of getting trampled in the hordes of people there should I pause to attempt to take a picture.

Already overwhelmed with the crowds, we hopped back on the subway and traveled far to the south to go to the Museum of American History where they had some splendid murals created with taxidermized animals that were incredibly life like. As an added bonus, it was much much quieter and subdued on a New York City scale anyway. By rural America scale, it was still a madhouse!

With nearly 20,000 steps under our belts which was pretty aggressive for less than a half day of touring, we picked up some food and made our way back to the motel for the evening and some quite time... 

or so we thought.