We had a leisurely morning at our hotel in Stamford on Monday, and the executive lounge was even manned, so we had breakfast there. Despite all the eating we did while on vacation, Jim and I both lost weight. I think it was a combination of eating healthier and not snacking - hopefully a habit we can maintain for a while.
Anyway, we checked out and caught a ride on the hotel shuttle to the train station in Stamford. It was a little hectic trying to get all four of us and our bags onto the train without losing anyone or anything, but once we were on it was a decent ride. More and more buildings, more evidence of a squalid city existence. We arrived at Grand Central terminal and emerged aboveground right by our hotel - The Waldorf-Astoria. As it was not yet time to check in, we checked our bags with the valet and grabbed a cab to the American Museum of Natural History.
First, I have to say it's really not much like they make it seem in the movie Night at the Museum, but it's easy to see where they did get the elements in the movie. As Jim and Aidan saw the 2nd and 3rd floors when they were at the museum last year, we concentrated mostly on the 1st and 4th floors this time, though we did see quite a lot of the Africa and Asia exhibits on the 2nd floor, too. The first floor was mostly about sea life - and we were particularly impressed by the enormous life-size blue whale model hanging from the ceiling! The fourth floor wowed us with the dinosaur exhibits - from the huge to the teeny. Very, very cool. We had lunch at the museum, too.
We walked past the World Trade Center site - lots of construction, noise and dirt - on our way to the dock to catch a cruise to Liberty Island. There was a huge long line to board the boat, but it went pretty quickly and the boat ride was fast, too. The Statue of Liberty is great, amazing, wow. So much bigger than one thinks. We walked all the way around her and took a lot of pictures (coming soon!) and bought a few souvenirs before boarding the boat back to the City.
A subway ride (during which Esme fell soundly asleep) and a short walk and we were back at the ~WA~ where we checked in and retrieved our bags and checked out our room. We got an upgrade to a three-room "room" - a huge marble bathroom, a two-bed bedroom, and a sitting room with closets and plenty of room for all our stuff. The rack rate for our room was $949 per night, we stayed two nights and also had breakfast both mornings in one of the many hotel restaurants. We paid a total of $10.83 - for The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, which we watched in our room on Tuesday night. Have I said yet that Jim has Diamond Hilton status? Once again: it's good to be the king.
After we checked in, we decided to have dinner at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. There was a long wait to order, and a somewhat shorter one to get our food, but it was good and we weren't in a hurry. It was also a relatively nice place to have an outdoor dinner. A nice calm end to our hectic first day in New York.