Day 70

Day 70: 7/26/15 (New York City)

0 miles

We slept in way later than we expected (surprise surprise), but we didn't really have a plan for the day so it wasn't a problem.  We spent a little bit of time trying to figure out exactly what we wanted to do, but all that was certain was finding some pizza.  We headed to the Metro station with Kristy to ride towards Little Italy.  Before leaving, we had to move Jillian's car because of street sweeping.  We parked right by a fence and when Jillian tried to get out she ended up denting her car just a little bit.  We made it over 14,000 miles without a scratch or a dent – if only we could have made it a few hundred miles more.  After a minor freak out and a temper tantrum, Jillian was almost, sort of over it.

When we got off the subway, we ordered a pizza from Lombardi's, which claims to be America's first pizza palor.  Whether or not that's true, we had visited a few years back and loved it so we decided it was worth another visit.  We walked with the pizza down the block a bit to a little park with picnic tables to eat.  Once again, Rico ate half the pizza – he is a pizza-eating machine.  After a delicious lunch, we walked back to the metro station to take it down to Battery Park, the tip of Manhattan.  Right off the stop, you get bombarded with Statue of Liberty tour offers.  We declined several as we made our way to the waterfront to enjoy the Statue from afar.

After snapping a few photos and enjoying the beautiful weather, we started walking towards the Freedom Tower.  There are two large infinity fountains which outline the where the Twin Towers stood.  The names of all the deceased are engraved around the edges.  We didn't have much of a plan for the rest of the day so we decided to get tickets for the 9/11 Memorial.  Admissions are every half hour so we had some time to waste before we could go in.  We found the closest bar and grabbed a beer.  When we finally got to the Memorial, we spent the next 3 hours inside.  The memorial is put together extremely well and is emotionally overwhelming at times.  It's built among the foundation of the North Tower and part of the South Tower and several pieces of infrastructure remain.  The historical exhibit in the center is where we spent the most time.  You wind along the timeline of the day encountering early warnings, last goodbyes, and a lot of wreckage in between.  Once we reached modern day, we headed out of the museum in search of some dinner.

We talked about finding some pho and located one that was up towards Kristy's apartment.  There was some construction or something going on along one of the train routes so we had a miserable time getting home.  The outbound train was on an express route so we had to get off 20 blocks up from the restaurant to hop on a local train going back down towards the city to finally get to the restaurant.  We were thinking we would eat in, but there was hardly anywhere to sit so we decided to just go home.  We were trying to decide between a cab, a bus, the train, or a really long walk.  We really didn't want to pay for a cab, Kristy wasn't sure of the bus routes, and walking was not appealing whatsoever.  The train situation was still a mess, but it was the lesser of four evils at that point.  Fortunately, we saved ourselves about 40 blocks of walking when Rico realized that we could walk only 2 blocks up to grab an express train home.  The normal 20 minute ride home turned into about 2 ½ hours.  Needless to say, we were spent – and HUNGRY!  We heated up some of our leftover Chinese food and dug into our pho (the place in Nashville was way better).  Around 11:30pm we headed to bed to catch a few hours of sleep before getting up to wait in line for Jimmy Fallon.

Fact:
Those who lost their lives on 9/11 will never be forgotten

Lesson:
If you're traveling around NYC late on a Sunday, just take a cab – it'll save yourself the headache


Eat Well; Travel Often
Rico & Jillian