NYC: Day 1

So, here are the pictures finally. I will have to split them up because some days we have a lot of pictures.

We left for NYC on Friday, July 4th at the CRACK of dawn. We were a little nervous about everything running smoothly since the goal was to be there to enjoy the NYC fireworks. We arrived in New York City and headed towards our hotel. We stayed at The Benjamin hotel. This happens to be the same hotel that we stayed at for our honeymoon. This time we just got an awesome deal and so we were able to stay there again. Here is a picture that borrowed from the website.

The fun thing is that our room was #2004, which happens to be the year that we were married! How fun!


We settled into our room and headed to eat some lunch. We didn't realize that most of the restaurants would be closed due to the holiday, but the concierge recommended Smith and Wollensky Steakhouse for a good burger. It did have a great burger, but it was a quick dose of "new york". Little tables close together, we ask for water to drink and it was in a juice glass and most of all the hamburger was like $18. Totally fine...and normal for NYC, but just a quick change of pace for just arriving. We headed back to the hotel for a quick nap...that happened to last longer than we had planned...we woke up, got ready quickly and headed towards the boat for our Dinner cruise. We took the subway, but then had to walk 4 blocks the Avenue way...which FYI is like 1/2 mile each block. It was FAR, but when we arrived there were probably like 1,000 people waiting to get on the different boats. The good news was that they were waiting for another company, not for the one that we were getting on. We got in line and on the boat just in time to find a seat pretty close to the window.

Us standing in line to get on the boat.

This is our seat, we sat next to a really sweet couple, which was good since we were on the boat for close to 7 hours. We started eating the 5 course meal which included a salmon tartar (however you spell that), mozzarella cheese, tomato and balsamic dressing salad, spinach salad, filet, mashed potatoes and veggies and for dessert molten chocolate cake with ice cream. Between courses we took time to look at the city on the top of the boat.

This is my inspired food pictures from Sunni. She always takes such great pictures of food on her outings and inspired Kevin and I to try and do the same on our trip.

This is what our boat looked liked...













After dinner we got settled on the top of the boat to wait to see the fireworks. There were a lot of boats that joined us.






We sat right under the Brooklyn Bridge.



Empire State Building

The barges that the fireworks were shot off had big water sprinklers that were red, white and blue.

Then it started getting dark and I tried to take some pictures of the city, but the camera made them a little blurry. But, here are a few...





We waited what seemed like forever and then the fireworks started. THEY were AWESOME!!








Here are some small videos of the fireworks...by no means as good as TV, but really great!

At the end of the show all the boats honk their horns as a way to applaude...it was so funny!

Overall it was an AWESOME experience...a once in a lifetime event! If you have ever had the desire to see the NYC fireworks in person, this is the way to do it!