TOTA IN NEW YORK CITY

How appropriate to see the survey (photo below) and the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, “Guests (or out-of-town relatives), like fish, begin to smell after three days”, while we were waiting for our flight back to St. Louis after spending 6+ days visiting my family in NYC. We enjoyed quality time with the family but it was always good to be home. I was sure that everyone was glad to have things back to normal after our stay.
Our flight from St. Louis on Tuesday, November 23rd was sort-of smooth flying. It was not crowded at Lambert International Airport when we left St. Louis. We experienced turbulence but it was not a major “shake-up”. We actually arrived at the gate about 20 minutes before scheduled landing. LaGuardia Airport was not as busy either. We knew that tomorrow, Wednesday would be different as it would be the day before Thanksgiving, a historically most travelled day. My brother, VL, picked us up and it was much appreciated. Later we had a nice dinner, delivered to the house from Tay Ho Vietnamese restaurant.

The next morning, after we took JL to school, we stopped by McDonald for breakfast. I noticed that most of the old men that used to hang out at a local Italian bakery, were now spending their time at McDonald. The bakery closed almost two years ago when the owners decided that they had enough and moved to Florida (well, it was a long story!).

One of items on our “wish list” was to get a Nathan’s hotdog (well, it was on my husband’s list. For some unknown reasons, I could no longer digest hotdog and would get sick for a day or two after eating one.) We took the D train to Coney Island, walked around the boardwalk (it was a bit windy and cold) and then to Nathan’s. It was crowded when the lunch rush started. More photos of Nathan’s in future post.

After Coney Island, we took the Q train to Times Square. We thought we could try to get tickets for a Broadway show. We did not really search for a particular show but most of them were sold-out since it was a holiday season with lot of tourists in town. We purchased tickets to see Wicked on Saturday.

Seeing the Freedom Towers was on my husband’s wish list, so after Times Square, we took the E train to the World Trade Center. We walked around the area and watched the construction workers leaving the site since it was already almost 4:00 p.m.

From the World Trade Center, we walked to the Brooklyn Bridge. Then it was time to take the #7 train to Flushing to meet up with my friend, MG and her family for dinner.

We did not get together when I visited last year, so it was 2 years since we saw each other. MG’s daughter, TA, picked us up and drove us to their house, about a few miles from the subway station. How time flies! It seemed just yesterday that TA was born and now she would be graduating from college. We went to a “punky” Korean restaurant. This large bow of seafood was one of the special items featured on the menu. After dinner, we all got into the van and MG took us back to Brooklyn.

It was our first full day in NYC and I felt so at home. You could take a New Yorker out of New York, but you could never take NY out of a NYer’s heart!