Thanksgiving in NYC

Upon arriving to our hotel in Times Square, we immediately realized that we were about to face one of the busiest times of the year in New York. Our room was not ready yet, so we introduced Canyon to the nearby sites. What do you suppose the first thing we saw was? The Naked Cowboy of course. Unfortunately, I was unable to snap a good photo of him because his entourage was charging $5 a pop just for snapping the country crooner in his tighty-whities!





The morning of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade required us to wake up early (5:30am) and stake our spot. Luckily our hotel was close, and there was a Starbuck's on every corner. We were quick to make friends with the other chatty tourists around us.





Even though Scot and Canyon were not happy with my early wake-up call, I can honestly say it was worth it - Canyon had a front row spot. This was a good thing, seeing as the crowd went about ten people deep and some of the less fortunate children only saw the top of the balloons as they floated on by, and definitely the back of everyone's head . If ever you are interested in going to see this classic parade, give us a call...we can give you some good local tips.




After the parade was over, the spectators were quick to move out. The weather was nice for the six hours we sat parked on a New York City sidewalk, not too chilly.













Yet another long line to wait in....we arrived to Battery Park and were confident that we would freeze (this was the coldest day) before we actually got to see the State of Liberty. While we waited, and waited, and waited, Canyon bought us some pretzels from a nearby vendor. When he came back with the change, Scot noticed that he had been "ripped off" because he was a kid. Naturally, Scot wasn't going to let this slide, so he had a word or two with the vendor and handed Canyon back the dollar that was rightfully his.








YES....Canyon did take this picture!













My boys, freezing their butts off for another important photo op in front of the Empire State Building.












About five minutes prior to this picture, we witnessed a small moment of pandemonium. An illegal purse vendor (a whole chain of them actually) got busted by the police. It was mass chaos once the person selling these illegal knock-offs got arrested, the crowd proceeded to move in on his goods and snatch them up before the police could take over.









Ice skating in Rockefeller Plaza. A real winter experience. Although, at this point in our trip, we were all too exhausted to lace up some skates, so we sat and watched for a while before heading back to our hotel.







This was one of my favorite sculptures. An elephant spying on our silliness through the evergreen trees. A perfect place for us to rest our feet and cut loose with a few funny faces for our photographer!









The first night we were there, we met my childhood friend and her husband in Central Park to see the balloons getting blown up for the parade. We had dinner at an excellent little Spanish-Chinese restaurant, very strange, very ethnic, very good.





Yes, that is the real thing. Canyon couldn't believe it either. He was just about at the end of his patience for this museum and then they turned the corner and Scot said, "If we didn't walk this far, you wouldn't have seen this." (pointing to Van Gogh's Starry Night) In which Canyon responded with, "That's not the real one."