We woke up to the 4th of July on day 3. We have always spent July 4th in Alabama with family so it was very different. Keatyn and I headed out to find some breakfast and found a cute little deli that had yummy stuff we brought back to the boys.
When I was planning this trip, I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with Peter at the hotel and he mapped out our trip. He said the 4th of July would be pretty crazy with everyone having the day off and not to plan to stray too far because transportation may be an issue. So we planned that day in Central Park. We grabbed a cab and first stopped at The Plaza Hotel. Keatyn exclaimed while walking through the grand hotel that she wanted her wedding there. Jimmy told her she better marry a rich, rich man. Lol!
Love him or hate him, you gotta go. It was impressive. Gold everything inside. We only saw the lobby and rode the escalators up and down but it was really cool to see.
Tiffany's was closed when we went by and never made it back but I had to snap a picture.
We got to Central Park and immediately grabbed a horse and buggy. The park is HUGE and to really see it, you need to take a ride. We even did an extended ride and didn't see nearly all of it. Our guide was so good and pointed out all kinds of things like where movies had been shot and what stars lived in the penthouses you saw overlooking the park. It was a great way to spend the day.
The bridge where the famous snowball fight from "Elf" was shot.
The coolest playground with these huge rocks to climb and sprinklers to run through. The kids spent about an hour before lunch playing here.
We had reservations at the Loeb Boathouse at 2:00 to eat. On our way there, we came upon these street entertainers. These guys were amazing gymnasts. Jumping and flipping over people, walking on their hands and acrobatics you couldn't believe. Before we knew it, they had pulled Trace out of the audience and were jumping over his head. My mama heart was pounding and I could tell he was really nervous. Then they started pulling men out of the audience to form a "jump over" line and Jimmy got sucked in too. Lol! So when they sent the "collection plate" around he happily put a 100 dollar bill in to get him and Trace out of the line of fire. These guys know what they are doing and there is no telling how much they make in a day. Keatyn has watched this video a dozen time since then. It's a really fun memory of our trip to Central Park.
We finally made it to the boathouse and were ready to eat and cool off. This place sat on a lake in the middle of the park and you could rent paddle boats by the hour. It was so beautiful.
The fountain where the "Friends" opening was shot.
After lunch we walked around a little longer and then headed back to the hotel to rest and get ready for the fireworks show that night. While we were sitting in the hall waiting on our room to be cleaned, I got a text from Lesley Rice asking if Trace was scaling the Statue of Liberty. Huh? Lol! This was his face when I asked him. Apparently some lady decided to climb Lady Liberty to protest the Immigration Law. She was trying to hang an "Abolish ICE" on the statue and they spent 2 hours trying to get her down. They had evacuated the whole island and made all the ferry boats leave. Ugh... I was SO glad we had been there the day before. She ruined the day for a lot of sight seers.
So that evening, we headed to the East River along with everyone else in Manhattan to get a seat for the 4th of July Macy's fireworks show. This was the largest fireworks display in the country and was being televised everywhere, with performances and a 2 hour show. Mom and dad were keeping our dogs at home and had set our DVR to tape what we were going to see live. I'll admit, my nerves were on edge. I thought, this is a little scary. I tried to put my fear out of my mind and we hiked blocks and blocks to get as close to the water as we could. We ended up on the 2nd row right next to the Queensboro Bridge. There were 4 barges in the middle of the river that were shooting fireworks starting at 9:45. We had a while to wait but luckily it was pretty cool and we made the best of it.
The show was AMAZING!! It is something I'll never forget. When we got home, we watched it again on TV and it was so cool to hear Kelly Clarkson and so many other stars sing patriotic songs that of course we couldn't hear from where we were that night.
It took about 1.5 hours to get back to the hotel after it was over. Imagine an entire island of people walking back across New York all at the same time. We were starving by this point so I waited in a line all the way out the door of McDonalds right next to our hotel to get us all food at midnight. We were worn out but happy. Ready to hit the hay and for our last day in New York.
