NEW YORK trip: Day 1

We are officially in New York City! Woohoo. We flew out this morning from Long Beach Airport (so nice and quaint, yet no good food establishments. Grab food before you come). This was our first time flying on Jet Blue and it was great! I LOVED having my own Direct TV screen, although I felt a little like a couch potato watching TV for about 5 hours. But I had fun flipping back and forth between Saturday Night Fever (I'd never seen. The only good part was John Travolta's solo dance) and Napoleon Dynamite. Overall, I'll be glad to be flying home on Jet Blue again.
We arrived around 5pm and stood in the lonnng line for a cab. It felt like we were at Disneyland, only there was no space mountain at the end. It was fun to drive through the different parts of town, though, headed over to Manhattan. We saw some cool cemetaries with crazy headstones in Queens, and some local kids playing bball in a street-side court.
Since Casey's work is paying for the trip we're staying at a nicer hotel than we would front on our own. It's called the Hotel Roger Williams, on Madison and 31st (Madison is so SPLASH) and it's very fun. Decorated in bright colors and cozy white comforters, with modern bathrooms (I like the Aveda soap)....it's just great! Here's our room and bathroom:


Once we settled in our room, we hit the streets on foot. We just wandered around and stumbled upon the Empire State Building. It's not too far from our hotel, so I guess we're in a fun area. It's funny how you can stumble upon HUGE buildings here. They just aren't easy to see when everything else around you is uber tall. So, we decided to take the elevator to the top. And we're glad we did! Here's what we saw:

You might be able to see the Statue of Liberty in the far top right corner. I know, it's hard to pick out.
Check out the tiny taxi cabs
Here's KING KONG's perching tower (the observation deck is at the 86th floor, so unfortunately, you can't go to very top)
The Crysler Building
Central park is in the background. And the GE bldg is Rockerfeller Plaza.
A cool Stained Glass window painting of the building
And here's us! (atop the Empire State Building)
Fun first day. We had some dinner and we're back at the hotel. Casey can't wait for me to get off the computer so we can use it to watch a movie. So....more to come on another day!