Our first stop was the Empire State Building. Liam decided he wanted to see this because Ace went to the St. Louis Arch and he wanted to try and get higher than him. Brothers and their competitiveness!

Pretty amazing view but a little costly.

After church on Sunday, we headed out to the USS Intrepid. It’s an aircraft carrier turned museum. It also housed the Enterprise shuttle that was used for test flights. We only had a short time here and Liam told me later he wished we had a longer time, but we all still enjoyed it.

All of us were quite impressed with the to scale lego model of the Intrepid. The ice on the river was quite impressive too! No. Us Southerners have never seen that before.

Up next, the Statue of Liberty and our visit to the 9/11 Memorial.

Liam turned 13 in December last year and ya’ll know what that means in our family…time for a 13th birthday trip. Liam chose New York to begin with then flipped to San Francisco when we thought Mark had a work trip out there but when that was canceled he swapped back to New York. I was excited to get to go with him since I had to miss out on Ace’s trip (we had two swimmers that had district competition that planned weekend). So, ya’ll get ready for a few posts about this special trip with Liam.

First stop was Lombardi’s. We didn’t go to the very first Lombardi’s restaurant but it was a chain of it. Obviously it was yummy and didn’t disappoint. However, later, we tried out the cheap pizza ($2 for two slices and a soda) and it was just as good.

While we’re talking about food, these onion rings were almost as big as my head! Juniors Cheesecake was so yummy. Let me give ya’ll some advice though, order an entree to share with one or two other people so you have plenty of room for cheesecake!

So, I have zero guilt that we totally devoured these milkshake creations. That day we had eaten light and climbed the stairs of the Statue of Liberty from the base to the crown. TO THE CROWN. 708 steep small stairs total! We walked everywhere too. There was not a day we were there that we didn’t walk over 12, 000 steps. So, these Black Tap milkshakes were our big reward. If you go to New York, Black Tap is a MUST!

We passed Radio City Music Hall.

Rockefeller Center. We watched the ice skaters and stopped in at the Lego Store and Nintendo Stores.

This reminds me, please make sure that when you Uber or Lyft that you verify your driver…especially after the tragedy in South Carolina recently.

Mark, of course, can’t go anywhere without doing a Geek Tour (for instance, we had to go by where the first HP was built when we were at Stanford…and the Android statues). Our New York stop included a walk by the B & H store which is consisted of a full block in New York City!