New York, Day 1

Finally getting around to doing a blog about the NYC trip from last weekend. Kim and I woke up real early (like 3:30 am) in order to get to the airport for our 6am flight. It was easy to get up since we knew we were going to someplace fun instead of work. No issues at all on the flights and we got to NYC at about 1:15. As soon as we got our first bag off the baggage claim, mom showed up. We got our other bag and headed out to the hotel in Queens. The area was a strange mix of people from all over the world. You could hear people speaking Chinese, Spanish and various others from Europe. Pretty cool. The hotel/room was nice, nothing fancy but got the job done and was nice and clean.

Right after we checked in we headed out to the city for some lunch, packet pick up and sightseeing. We had lunch at a little deli, not too bad and lots of people watching (nothing too special). Then we headed out to the expo.



I got my packet, looked at all the goodies in side and started to look at all the booths and shop. I wanted to buy a lot of stuff, but decided it was going to be a long trip and ended up with just one shirt.

Next we headed back to Manhattan. We went by the NYC Library and took pictures by the famous Lions.


There were also some pretty cool street dancers that had a pretty good crowd.



Next up was Times Square. It was Halloween night, so we knew there would be some interesting people out and we weren't disappointed.

Here is a Teletubbie playing Rock Band as an example.





A group of bikers were out riding (known as Critical Mass) to raise bike awareness and they were all dressed up.





We headed over to a little pizza joint and had some great pizza. The New Yorkers know how to make a good pie. I think the highlight for the ladies was the dessert, a canoili of some sort with strawberries and cinnamon.



We were all pretty tired at this point, so we headed back to the Grand Central to get the subway back to the hotel.



Lots of people dressed up at this point, a favorite of ours was a group of guys dressed up as skunks. We got back to the hotel, planned out the next day and slept great (well I did anyway).