Fact: Day Eleven

We've done it--we took our kids for a full day to New York City and survived to tell the tale!

With our hotel being in New Jersey, we had a decision to make...how do we get to the city?

The economy option involved taking the free hotel shuttle to the airport, switching to the airport shuttle and riding to the bus depot, switching to the bus, transferring twice, and arriving in Times Square probably a bit dizzy.

The speedy option involved $200 worth of train tickets for the six of us to get across the river and back.

The Parker option involved driving our van across the George Washington Bridge and parking for free on the street in Harlem (after figuring out where we'll go to church tomorrow and where our apartment is starting tomorrow afternoon). We got on the subway in Harlem and off we went on our day's adventure for the mere cost of taking the Jersey Turnpike ($2.35) and a little gas (the kind that powers the van--not the kind that is from heartburn because of stress).

After exploring Harlem from the car we started out on the subway. We went first to Times Square where we browsed in the shops (m&ms world, anyone?), checked out the TKTS booth (cheap Broadway tickets, anyone?), ate a hot dog (not Jourdan), and sat in the bleachers people-watching for a while. Then we went to the Gershwin Theater.
Wicked is currently playing at the Gershwin, but we weren't there to see a show. We were there to find a miniature cast-iron guy (Mr. Poe from A Series of Unfortunate Events, actually) that Laurie Jayne and Adam hid for us on their NYC trip 3 weeks ago. He was there! Matt was the first to find him (easy, perfect clue, LJ). He is now nestled safely here in our hotel room and we have 4 more characters to find before we leave Manhattan for the last time (I already know this week is going to speed by and I'm dreading it being over).

We have unlimited-use 7-day subway passes that expire next Friday at midnight. You can bet that we will be getting our money's worth for the passes. We got on and off the subway at least 8 times today. We found an Amish market, went to Roosevelt Island for the Improv Everywhere mission, went back to Times Square to watch it fill with people for Saturday Night fun, found our way back to Harlem (Jim was BEYOND ecstatic that our van was still there, unscathed, and with no ticket on the windshield), and figured out how to get back to Jersey (remember that I am intimately acquainted with the Jersey Turnpike and all nearby roads between exits 14 and 13A and my navigating skills far exceed my piloting skills).

It was a piece of cake.

The day was great--we got pictures of Dwight enjoying the sights, loved seeing scandalous clothing on outrageous people, fell asleep on the subway, participated in a HUGE event with well over 1000 people, and have remembered how to get around the island (Jim and I were here four years ago--this is the kids' first trip).

The bummer is that I lost my camera today.

We had it on Roosevelt Island, took a bunch of surreptitious pictures before the event started...and now it's gone. There were a couple spots where we had to lie down on the grass for "nap time" and I am convinced that my camera fell out of my bag during one of those. The good news is that all my pictures from the trip (over 400 total) are on Jourdan's harddrive. The only thing we lost were the actual camera and about 8 pictures from today (finding Mr. Poe, Dwight in Times Square, us in our colored shirts for Improv Everywhere).

While we're on the subject of bad news, we also just realized today that we are moving to an apartment for the next 5 days (that's not the bad news--stick with me here). We're not sure that we'll have wireless access during those days so we may be working with a delay before you get any more blog updates after tonight (THAT's the bad news--so if you experience a delay in blog updating, please know that it's a technology issue and not operator failure...I promise you'll hear all about the trip whether you want to or not).

Back to good news--there are pictures up at Improv Everywhere (they'll be adding more as the week goes on) and Will made the homepage! He's also in a bunch of pictures in the link to Mark's pictures in the post (he's not in the pregame or postgame albums--just the main one...and so is half of Jim in a blue NY t-shirt). It really was amazing--see if you can follow the progression of the photos and figure out what we had to do. We stretched, pointed, followed, danced, yelled, walked, fought, laughed, and removed our shirts.

Pictures today are brought to you by Jourdan "I always save the day" McNeil who will be the sole photographer for the rest of the journey.

Times Square at just before noon.
Wicked!
The display in the Gershwin Theater wherein LJ & Adam hid Mr. Poe for us to find. Will was extremely energized by the find and wanted to immediately start searching for all the others. He told me "Just point me in the way of 5th Avenue and I'll find the next one!"...uh, yeah. Right.
Manhattan from Roosevelt Island.
This is at the end of the experiment and we're all walking back to the subway station. They planned for about a thousand participants--there were easily triple that. Matt has a white t-shirt on because we all had to take off our colored shirts at one point. Some of the other agents had put their colored ones back on (probably because they didn't have their moms handy to carry theirs).
Times Square from the subway station. Part of the fun of riding the subway is not knowing where in the world we will pop out. We generally know what intersection/region of the world we're emerging into...but we aren't familiar enough yet to know where we'll be once we hit the street. It usually takes us a few seconds to gather our bearings. Rachel said her favorite part of riding the subway is swiping her pass. But she also confesses that DC's Metro has better pass swiping than NYC does.
Times Square at 7pm on Saturday night. It's getting busy! We were here today and starting tomorrow, Times Square is turning into an all-pedestrian section of the city. No vehicles will be able to travel a 6-ish block section and I am ridiculously excited to show my kids and Jourdan the difference. We sat and watched people & traffic for a while today...and we're all eager to get back and see how it's