2016 New Year’s Eve in New York City – 2016-17 + Game #6 vs Seton Hall
Our family's trip this year was the 7th venue on our Big East Conference Checklist. Erik and Tim have a quest to attend an away Marquette Men's basketball game at every school in the Big East Conference. If you are reading these blogs for the first time, we attempted a similar trip to New York City last year (January, 2016) to attend the Marquette versus St. John's game. Check out my blog post called "A round-trip that was … and one that wasn't". That was the "wasn't".
Once the 2016-17 Big East conference schedule was released, the only road trip we could make was on New Year's Day. Our plan quickly became the quest to attend the Marquette versus Seton Hall game in Newark, New Jersey. But since it was New Year's Day, we decided to make this a family vacation and travel to New York City. We spent 5 days from December 29th to January 3rd on Manhattan.
Our flight out of Milwaukee to La Guardia in New York was flawless. We, in fact, got into New York earlier than expected. Since check-in at our hotel was at 4pm, we had plenty of time to figure out our bus-to-subway route and make our way to the hotel. Of course, New York didn't really seem open to early check-in so we dropped our bags in the lobby of the Marriott Courtyard and hit the streets for a wet, rainy excursion.
Day 1 – December 29, 2016
Our walk before checking in included:
The 9/11 Memorial
The New York Stock Exchange
Wall Street
Staten Island Ferry
Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (we saw it but didn't travel to it)
Battery Park
Wall Street bull statue, officially titled Charging Bull
O'Hara's Irish Pub
We gotta give a shout out to O'Hara's Restaurant and Pub which was located immediately next to our hotel. The entire staff was very friendly and even feigned interest in our Packers even though they are NY Giants fans! O'Hara's is a quaint little tavern located one block from the 9/11 Memorial with an amazing set of pictures of the tavern and area from 9/11! This is all located next to the well-known FDNY Ten House Engine Company that was stuck right in the middle of the 9/11 disaster. What is really cool about the tavern is that on the one-year anniversary of 9/11, a visiting fire fighter tore his Fire Department patch from his shirt and stuck it on the wall which started a trend; the tavern walls are now lined with Fire and Police Department patches from all over the United States to show support. It is awesome!
We then made our way back to the hotel for check-in. The view from our hotel room was just outstanding. We were on the 20th floor of the Marriott Courtyard in a corner room overlooking the 9/11 Memorial and the One World Tower.
Our evening was then filled by visiting:
9/11 Museum
Trinity Church
Day 2 – December 30, 2016
The quest for Day 2 was to check out Central Park. This was also our first real test to figure out the New York Metro subway which I think we passed! We made a quick stop in the Times Square area to check it out. This also allowed Tim to fulfill a request to get a picture of the Naked Cowboy. Since we would be traveling to Times Square on New Year's Eve and there would be tons of people, we wanted to check it out beforehand so that we had some sense of where we would be going. After checking out that area, we headed to Central Park. It sure feels like we walked most of the park which was validated by Kyle's FitBit which had us taking 28,000+ steps for the day. There were ton's of iconic areas in and near the park like Park Avenue and the Guggenheim Museum.
While we were exhausted, we pushed ourselves to check out the Natural History Museum which is located immediately across the street from Central Park.
Day 2 consisted of:
Times Square
Naked Cowboy
Central Park
Natural History Museum
Day 3 – December 31, 2016
We started the day by going up the One World Observatory. The 47-second elevator ride up to the 102nd floor was cool in itself. We picked a very clear day so we could "See Forever", or so the marketing material says. We all enjoyed this tour and would recommend it to anyone.
Our afternoon was the Broadway show: Book of Mormon at the Eugene O'Neill Theater. By most accounts, the play is raunchy but we all laughed pretty hard at it. We felt we had to do that but this was clearly the most expensive activity we did during the entire trip. We purchased obstructed view tickets but certainly didn't feel like we missed much. It was a very fun event!
Finally, this day was about New Year's Eve in Times Square. We purchased tickets to attend a party at the Madame Tassaud's Wax Museum right on 42nd Street only one block down from the actual ball drop! Madame Tassaud's hosts a Ball Drop Party which includes open bar and food but our real objective was to have access to bathrooms throughout the evening. Suffice it to say that we may never watch the Time's Square event on TV the same way…it includes lots of people wearing Depends!!!! At 11:45pm, they opened the front door so we could spill out onto the sidewalks and into the street. This was just a Mass of Humanity!!!
Day 4 – January 1, 2017
We got back to the hotel quite late (about a 45 minute subway ride from Times Square) so we slept in until about noon…I think we deserved it. Our next adventure was to figure out how to get to Newark, New Jersey using the PATH Train system. That turned out to work out sweet! We made it to downtown Newark in about 30 minutes and then grabbed dinner at the Dinosaur BBQ located next to the Prudential Center. Did you catch that..dinner was our first meal! J
The Prudential Center where Seton Hall University plays their Men's basketball games is a nice facility and our tickets were dirt cheap! While Marquette found a way to lose the game at the bitter end, we really enjoyed the time and Tim even made the big screen.
After the basketball game, our job was to get back to the hotel, pickup a couple of beers and cheer on the Packers as they played the Detroit Lions to determine the North Division Champions. What a view we had while watching the game:
Day 5 – January 2, 2017
Monday was a day that we kept open to just check out the city. We filled the day by visiting:
The Apartment of "Friends" (TV Series) at the corner of Grove and Bedford in West Village. As the story is told, every character lives in one of two apartment units in this building.
Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village is the location where George Washington was inaugurated as the first US President and located adjacent to New York University (NYU).
New York High Line - a public park built on an old freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan's West Side in the Meatpacking District.
All-Access Tour to Madison Square Garden – which was a bit of a misnomer as it was a New York Knicks game day and thus we didn't get into the locker rooms. (This was Erik's favorite part of the trip).
New York Public Library
St. Patrick's Cathedral
Grand Central Station
Trump Tower (and all the security madness associated with it)
Chinatown
Pizza at Lombardi's in Little Italy – The United State's first Pizzeria
Day 6 – January 3, 2017
This was simply our travel day to do a final subway test and catch our flight back to Milwaukee.
All-in-all this was a very memorable trip. I cannot say that it was ever on our bucket list but it will be a trip we will talk about for a very, very long time.