Assuming correctly we would probably need some, I withdrew some cash from our bank before we left Atlanta. I left with only 20 dollar bills in my wallet. The flight was late for a number of reasons including a delayed departure (unfortunately which almost always occurs), traffic at the Atlanta airport (we were about 15th in line for take-off), a low pressure region off the coast of North Carolina (which we had to fly around), and overcapacity conditions at the New York airport since we were so late (which resulted in us flying in a hold pattern for 20 minutes over DC.
Anyway, I say all that because Lindy was starting to get understandably hungry after our arrival (since Anya takes a lot of the nourishment away from her every couple hours). Before we even claimed our baggage, I had to go to one of the overpriced stores in the airport to buy some food for Lindy. The only store I could find had mostly sugary pasteries, the typical junk food and a few bananas. The first two options won't work so banana it was!
I take one small banana up to the cashier and pull out my 20 dollar bill to pay for the 79 cent banana (pricey eh? - but it was still the cheapest thing in the store).
The lady cashier asks me, "Do you have a smaller bill?"
I reply, "No, I just got off a plane and 20s are all I brought."
She asks, "Well then, do you really want the banana or do you just want change?"
"No, Ma'am. I want the banana. I know it looks like I'm trying to break a twenty but I really want this banana. Nothing else will work. It just so happens this banana is the cheapest thing in this store. I'm getting it for my wife who is nursing..." (I even got that personal...)
"Yah. Sure, kid. Whatever." (She didn't believe me. Would you?)
"Huh?... But those pastries look pretty good. Don't you think I would choose something a little better if I was just breaking a 20?"
"Whatever. Here you go."
To myself: "Okay...."
So, the first New Yorker I met wasn't the nicest but I quickly realized she was the exception. Thankfully.
The first thing we did was go to the temple. It was lovely. The Manhattan Temple is unique in that it's found primarily on the 5th floor of a building with the local church meeting house on the 3rd (and 4th). It wasn't very big but it did stand out among the ubiquitous skyscrapers of Manhattan...
For lunch we went to Tom's Restaurant. This it the restaurant that Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer supposably eat at in almost every episode of Seinfeld. I ordered the chicken salad. If you are a big fan of Seinfeld you may know why... (For those of you don't, there is an episode called "The Big Salad" but that's not the only reason....) Interestingly, this was on my list of things to see in New York. The food was surprisingly good but as you can see in this picture people were so interested in looking at Anya (bottom left corner) that my family didn't even get to be in this picture with me.
We walked through the campus of Columbia University nearby. It's found right off Broadway Street and was very beautiful. Here are just a few pictures we took.
Lastly, this same evening we won front row tickets to the broadway musical "Wicked." It is a hilarious story about the lives of the witches from the Wizard of Oz.
We absolutely loved it and laughed the whole time. We couldn't ask for better seats. For most shows a certain number of seats are discounted for the "peasant folk" (i.e. us) but in order to buy these tickets your name has to be drawn from a pool of other peasant folk (usually it is tourists who didn't buy tickets in advance like us). But we lucked out and were blessed with a wonderful surprise!
This is getting too long for people to read so I'll stop here. We'll tell you more soon!
