the big apple

Ben and I just got back from a wonderful weekend in New York and Connecticut! We had the best time. Bobby Godwin got married on Sunday and Ben officiated the wedding. But it was an entire weekend affair.

We left for Pittsburgh late Thursday evening to stay with John and Shawna. We had some wings and watched Game 6 of the World Series. We were up and out early Friday morning for a flight to LaGuardia in New York City. We met up with PawPaw Donald (Lisa's Dad) and Uncle Donny (Lisa's brother) in the airport, picked up a rental car and then took two cabs into the city.

PawPaw, Donny & Shawna on the rental car shuttle.

Ben wasn't feeling great and was a bit on the cranky side. The crazy mixture of yesterday's wings mixed with a crazy ride on the rental shuttle and an even crazier cab ride left him in a pretty foul mood. He recovered (much) later in the day after sleeping most of the car ride to Connecticut.

It was John's lucky day to carry around their wedding gift to Bobby & Rachel as his carry on.

We met Lisa, Derek, Connor and David in Time Square

And had lunch at an awesome pizza place called "John's Pizza." John's brother
Jason had taken them there before. Such a neat atmosphere and super yummy pizza!

We saw who could find their way around the city faster:
John on his iPhone

or Derek with an old fashioned map

Then we took the Subway to Ground Zero.

And saw some pretty big rats on the track while we waited.

Lisa took this picture right after she was closed in the Subway doors.
Thankfully she didn't have two huge bruises for the wedding!

We passed by the Occupy Wall Street people. Interesting.

The September 11 Memorial was very impressive. It took us about 30 minutes, multiple viewings of our tickets and a pass through security to actually get to it. And, of course, Ben in his savvy security skills got the old pat down at the airport and at the memorial!

One of the new buildings being built.

Names of people that died in all 4 locations surround both memorial fountains.

It's very park-like if you can get past the construction. Someday it will be beautiful.

You know when you see the same person over and over again. This was the woman I saw for
many blocks before and after going to the memorial. Pretty hard to miss her.

These memorial fountains were especially impressive. Pictures don't even come close.

Derek and Lisa surprised us with a limo to take all of us back to get our cars at the airport.
Needless to say, after our morning cab rides, we were super thankful!

They weren't lying when they said a 10 person limo. We could not have squeezed another person in there.

After getting our rental cars, we drove 90 miles (2 1/2 hours) to Westbrook, CT. Ben sat in the 3rd row of the SUV surrounded by luggage with his knees up to his chest - but thankfully he slept most of the way. We laughed about smoke breaks and stores being closed and all sorts of inappropriate things!

We went directly to the house where John, Shawna, Connor, David, PawPaw, Donny, Bobby (one night), Ben and I stayed in. It was so nice. It was fun to have a central place to hang instead of everyone being in hotel rooms. Lisa, Shawna and I hit the grocery store and then picked up a LOT of Chinese for some very hungry guys.  Bobby came over and we got settled for the rest of the weekend.

New York City was amazing! I'd never want to live there. And I'm not sure I'd like to spend lots of time there. But I would love to go back and see a show, walk through Central Park and see some of the other sight seeing things. Although I'm fairly certain Ben will never go back. We've decided that someday I will find a rich friend to travel the world with so Ben doesn't have to.