New York City |
I had planned to go into New York City just for fun during my time here--this IS my vacation time--and was planning to make a day-trip on Friday but then I found out my cousins were coming that day for the weekend so I went to the City on Thursday to look around a bit by myself and then met with the cousins on Friday afternoon and evening. |
| Thursday Afternoon |
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| I worked at Bethany Thursday morning and then went to lunch with Jean Casadone, the major gifts coordinator, and she dropped me off at the train to New York City. After going to the Maryknoll 39th Street House in Manhattan, I took a 2.5 hour walk through midtown Manhattan basically walking across the island on 42nd Street, the locus of Times Square which is always a blaze of light and a buzz of people. |
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| Everything is lights and glitter in Times Square so even the entrance to the subway has to be lit up and flashing. |
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| Likewise McDonald's follows suit and has thousands of red and yellow flashing lights on its sign. |
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| Even the police get into the spirit. Their lights don't flash but they are big and bright blue and white neon to celebrate Times Square in their own way. |
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| Friday Morning |
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| I walked from Maryknoll on 39th Street in Manhattan to the north end of Central Park at 110th Street. Going to the park I walked 5th Avenue and stopped at St. Patrick's Cathedral which is undergoing extensive renovations inside and out. |
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| Central Park is simply beautiful, a design jewel in a masterful city plan. It is full of people and full of famous places such as the Beatles' Strawberry Fields and the Great Lawn and so many other interesting venues. And it's all in the middle of a great city! |
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| A Central Park statue of Lewis Carroll's Alice and other denizens of Wonderland. |
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| Personal trainers are the thing now in many metropolitan areas, and Central Park had this crew of personal trainers for the kids, facilitating their paths to success as their mothers watched! The walk to Central Park and back took 4 ½ hours. |
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Friday Afternoon
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| Charlie's uncle Joe Dittmeier had three sons, Allen, Tony, and John, and this weekend they came with their wives Jami, Tricia, and Moira to NYC to visit Colleen Dittmeier, Tony and Tricia's daughter, who is interning at the Nautica apparel company. Charlie met them at Penn Station and then they took the subway to their Manhattan hotel. |
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| It was a couple blocks from the subway to the hotel so we had a convoy of touristy types traipsing through Manhattan. |
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| Colleen had got permission for us to visit Nautica headquarters where she is interning and she gave us a tour. |
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