Saydel Band & Choir Trip to New York 2014: Day 4

It was brought to my attention today that there wasn't a blog update for Saturday! It wasn't because we all got mugged on the streets and are lying in a gutter somewhere ... I wrote the following blog and hit "publish," it just didn't go to the internet! So sorry about that. Here's Saturday's blog:

But first, I want to thank all of you mid-west readers for sending some of your warmer weather over here. It was in the mid-50's today, and partly sunny! Not too shabby! Of course, tomorrow is supposed to be 36 and Monday is supposed to be 28 with snow, but today was great!

We started off the day by taking a ferry ride over to Liberty Island, the home of the Statue of Liberty. We were able to climb up the pedestal, but unfortunately not all the way to the top. I didn't even realize that people were allowed up to the top of her crown again, but we saw a few people starting the trek up there. Fun fact: I've actually been up to the top before ... But I was only 2 years old. My mom carried me up all those hundreds of stairs! And she still doesn't let me forget it!

After the statue is when things got a little interesting. Not all of us were able to rush through the statue fast enough to get back on the required ferry that would take us to Ellis Island, so the group ended up missing the boat! Ironically enough, this was the name of the ferry:

Which is all too bad, as Ellis has such a huge amount of history for this country! Oh, well. Now we know: next time, allow more time at Liberty Island!

But we did end up with a bit more time for lunch back on the Manhattan side of things, so we found a plaza close to Ground Zero with a bunch of street venders and little restaurants. And pigeons. Lots and lots of pigeons.

After a surprisingly good turkey sandwich on my part, we walked the last couple of blocks to Ground Zero to see the 9/11 Memorial and the One World Trade Center. That's always a chilling and sobering sight to see. We had the added experience of being able to watch a visiting Irish dignitary make a presentation of a wreath along with a compliment of Color Guard (the Irish Soldier kind, not the marching band kind). Although I could barely hear what he was saying, it was still pretty fascinating. By this point, however, people's bladders were starting to feel the strain, as the 9/11 Memorial doesn't have any restrooms for some reason. So we walked down to Wall Street to stop at the Federal Building to use their restrooms ... Only to find that the doors were locked! So, we turned around and just walked back to the buses. This was the only time we willingly said "yes, go ahead and use the bus bathrooms!"

We then drove up the "finger" of Manhattan to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the largest cathedral in the world. This was another addition to the day that we weren't originally planning on, but we really wanted the students to see a gigantic cathedral in all its glory, and St. Patrick's was under heavy scaffolding and renovation when we went to see it. But wow, am I glad we did go see it! I had never been in by here before, and it definitely takes your breath away!

Then we were off to pizza at John's Pizzeria where we were able to stuff our faces with all sorts of delicious pizza and desert (and salad!). We then rolled ourselves down a couple of blocks of Time Square to the theater were we saw Newsies! Now, I'm a huge Broadway nerd, so I already knew that this show was going to be amazing ... And it was still even better than I was anticipating! The show was ridiculously high-energy, the singing was fantastic, and the dancing was just crazy (in a good way). The show had a cast of probably 90% men, so it was great for our guys to see that other guys CAN sing and dance, and it's pretty awesome when they do.

And that was Saturday! Tomorrow, we have the USS Intrepid Museum and the Museum of Natural History, followed by Dallas BBQ and then the world-famous Vienna Philharmonic!

I leave you with some pictures of our adventures today.