New York City

After our adventures in Maine, we continued on to New York City. We spent two days in the city, one in the financial district and one in Midtown Manhattan, both times driving into the city, parking and then walking everywhere. It was a fun and exhausting two days in the city. Lucas, however, thought it was great.....especially the pigeons.

We saw all the standard tourist stuff in the financial district including Wall Street, Trinity Church, St. Paul's Chapel, and Ground Zero. Ground Zero is currently closed off entirely in preparation for the opening of the 9/11 memorial that will be opening on 9/11/11. We did see the progress being made on the new World Trade Center tower.

One cool thing that we saw, that I didn't even know existed, was the Federal Hall across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. New York City was the Capitol of the United States for ~1.5 years from mid-1788 to 1790, and is the site of George Washington's inauguration.

For lunch we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and ate at Grimaldi's Pizzeria. The walk across the bridge was long and hot, but the pizza was completely worth it. It probably has something to do with how hungry I was, but Grimaldi's is among some of the best pizza I've ever eaten. Even Lucas had a good time.

After more wandering around, we made our way up to Little Italy for dinner. We ending up picking Ristorante Da Gennaro and had a good time, although I don't think anything could top the pizza we'd already had for lunch.