Monday, July 20, 2009

Metropolitan Museum of Art

On Saturday we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We went in expecting to spend maybe two hours, but we ended up staying 7 hours! The place was huge, and had so much really neat stuff besides just paintings.
There were tons of Greek and Roman statues and artifacts. This is a real Roman column.
And these are real mummy coffins from like 3000 BC! They also had all these walls with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
There was a whole wing of the museum with medieval suits of armor and all sorts of swords and guns from hundreds of years ago. Dan really liked this part!
Here is a picture from outside the museum. Even though I am not a big art fan, I would recommend this museum to anyone going to New York for a visit.
Of course you can't be in New York for too long without being sucked in by at least of few of the street vendors. Usually I am the one who gets lured in by their low prices, but Dan found some nice Italian ties for $5 dollars each! This gave me a good excuse to stop at some purse vendors on our way back to our apartment!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Dan and I had a really fun weekend here, even though I was really sad we couldn't be in Billings with my whole Stott family for the Nugent sealing and my grandma's 80th birthday. Dan and I took a ferry out to see the statue of liberty, and it was really really cool. It is so big and is a breathtaking sight. We didn't get to climb to the top because the tickets to do that were sold out until September!

I loved being out in the water. The New York harbor is so beautiful, I don't think my pictures do any justice. It is just cool to see the sky scrapers right next to the ocean.

After the statue of liberty we took the ferry over to Ellis island. We got a little tour and watched a movie there about the peak immigration years. It was quite a patriotic day and made me really proud to be an American. We really are so blessed to live in this free country!
Here is a picture of ellis island from the ferry. It is a really ornate and beautiful building.
Another picture of lady liberty. A few things I learned about the statue: The full name is "Liberty enlightening the world". Also, did you know that the thickness of the green copper shell on the statue is as thick as two pennies stuck together!
On Friday night Dan and I walked around Times Square a little bit, and I got this picture of the Mary Poppins Marquis. A day care director told us that she can always tell the tourists from the New Yorkers because the tourists are always looking up. I think we stick out as tourists because I am always craning my head up to see the tops of all the buildings!
This isn't the best picture of times square, but I think it is so funny that every time we go there, there are all these people just sitting in lawn chairs in the middle of the road and I really have no idea why.
Me with Morgan Freeman! . . . Acutally it is a statue, but doesn't it look so real! I really thought it was him at first. Dan and I did pass Diane Keaton on the street the other day though! She had a hat on and was trying to look inconspicuous but I totally made eye contact with her. I would have stopped and asked to get a picture with her, but by the time I realized who it was, we had passed her. Well, those were our adventures for the weekend, hopefully more will be coming . . .

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Fun in the City

So Dan and I have been super busy since we got to New York. We have been working quite a bit, and when we aren't working, we have been busy trying to see the city! We spend a lot of time on the subways, and can pretty much find our way around. We are staying in a cute little apartment in the "east village" which is near NYU and is quite the party neighborhood. I feel pretty safe because there are three locked doors you have to go through before you get to our apartment!
We found out that you can get extremely discounted tickets to broadway shows on the day of the show if you have a student ID. So we went and saw Mary Poppins the other night and it was soooo cute. The stage equipment was amazing and the dancing was really fun.



Last week we went and saw South Pacific, and it was really good too! I didn't even know the story before, but I recognized some of the songs and the music was really really good.



Dan and I in the Mary Poppins theater. This is the only picture I have of Dan and I since we got to New York. He absolutely hates taking pictures, so the only way I can get pictures of us is if I ask someone to take the picture without telling him first. Hopefully we will get a few more before we leave the city!



On the 4th of July we went to Coney island and witnessed the national hot dog eating contest at the famous Nathan's hotdogs. The competition was on ESPN, and we could really only see it on the big screen because there was so many people there! The winner ate 68 hotdogs in ten minutes! I ate a hotdog from this stand, and it was pretty dang good.



We also walked along the boardwalk, but didn't feel like shelling out 10 dollars for a ferris wheel ride!



We also went and watched the Macy's fireworks over the Hudson river on the 4th, which were amazing, but we didn't get the best view again because there were so many people! Hopefully we will find some more fun things to this weekend, and I will try to post them sooner!

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Catch Up

Dan sitting and watching the fire

This is my cousin TaNisha coming out of the temple
My mom, sister Ashley, me, and my dad waiting outside the temple for TaNisha

We just finished our first week in New York, but since I haven't posted for a while, I thought that I would catch up on the month of June first. I bummed around a little bit and studied for the RD exam, which I passed last week! Dan worked and finished his spring classes. My mom came down to Utah for about a week for Brooke Hanson's wedding and my cousin TaNisha's wedding. My mom, Parker and I hiked up to Timpanogos caves one day, we went shopping, and helped with both the weddings. My dad and Ashley also came down for a day for my cousin's wedding. After that, Dan had finished his classes, so the two of us decided to bust out our tent and sleeping bags we got for our wedding and go camping for a couple of days. It was really fun and relaxing! We just sat around the fire, read, and fed little chipmunks chips. I wasn't able to catch that on camera though. Then we came back to Provo for a couple of days so I could cram and then take my test, then we went and stayed with Dan's grandparents in Scipio Utah. It is a tiny little town with about 325 people, but we had lots of fun with Dan's grandparents. On our way back we stopped in Manti for the Manti pageant with my Aunt Bethany's family. The pageant was pretty good, but a little cheesy as usual. Then we had one day to clean and pack before we flew to New York!