NYC - Day 2 Part 2

After visiting Ground Zero, we continued on to the financial district.  We headed towards Wall Street because Caleb wanted to see the Charging Bull, which according to Wikipedia is, "the symbol of aggressive financial optimism and prosperity"

I think it's sorta freaky looking, but whatever.

Next, we walked through Battery Park where we encountered a wild turkey.  

You don't see any wildlife outside of pigeons in NYC - so the turkey caused quite a stir.

The Sphere once stood between the World Trade Centers, but it suffered damage during the 9/11 attacks.  

The sphere is now located within Battery Park.

Next we boarded the Staten Island Ferry

We loved the ferry because we got to see so much without having to do any walking

We even got to see a newly married couple on the ferry - which was a bit odd.

I'm sure they thought we were just as odd, since Caleb insisted on taking a picture.

I'm imagining that they met on the ferry, fell in love and then got married. 

Maybe their romance will become the next Meg Ryan & Tom Hanks movie.

At this point we went back to our hotel to get showers.  While NYC is beautiful and very interesting, it also has many people, odd smells and cramped spaces.  It didn't help that the weather was very humid, which just added to the mugginess.   Not that you wanted to know all that, I just needed to justify my late afternoon shower.

You work up a great appetite in NYC with all of the walking, so we asked the concierge at our hotel to recommend a good place to eat dinner.  She suggested a local Italian place, so we hit the streets again.  

We walked two blocks and then we saw. . .

Little Italy (another tourist trap) hadn't even been on my list of "must-sees" but we were happy we stumbled upon it.   Little Italy is literally about 6 blocks of restaurants, all of which serve Italian food.  They have their menus set up next to the sidewalks so that you can compare their menu to the 20 other restaurants serving the exact same thing.  To add to the mix, each restaurant has a person standing next to the menu, practically demanding for you to choose their restaurant.  It made me want to find the closest McDonalds. Not really.

We finally decided on a little restaurant with plenty of outdoor seating. I had a delicious pasta dish - angel hair pasta, chicken, sundried tomatoes, and artichoke hearts.  Caleb had pizza, because apparently men eat pizza whenever they can.

I had been warned about how abrupt the servers can be in Little Italy, but it's still surprising. There are no pleasantries, whatsoever.  At one point the hostess seated a family at a table near our table and the manager of the restaurant started yelling at the hostess for seating them at that particular table.  They proceeded to yell at each other for atleast 30 seconds, right next to our romantic entertaining meal.  The hostess lost the fight, so she walked up to the family and asked them to move - after they were already seated. Awkward.

After dinner, we went looking for dessert and we found chocolate gelato.  

It was alright, but Breyers Chocolate Ice Cream still owns my heart.

Sunday morning we checked out of our hotel.  Before we left I took a few more pictures.

It's amazing how much green space this hotel incorporated into NYC. Loved it!

Our last stop was a service at Hillsong Church NYC.

Certainly worth checking out if you are ever in NYC on a Sunday

 New York City has been on my "to visit" list for awhile, so it was nice to check it off.  

We had a great time and were happy that we decided to be spontaneous :)