We're back...

We've been on vacation the last couple of weeks, but are now back at work and dealing with the customary post-vacation colds, lack of motivation, and sleepiness.  The house was clean for the two glorious days that I was home but not not back to work, but now the dishes, newspapers, and folded laundry are piling up as I sit in the chair with my box of Kleenex.  Give me another week, and I may be able to function as a normal human being.

We went to New York City for five or six days, then rented a car and drove to Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame.  From there, we went on to Niagara Falls and flew home from Buffalo.  I'm posting a few pictures - if you're really bored and want to look at all of them, they're in their own set on our Flickr page.

We started our vacation of Labor Day weekend, which meant that things were packed.  It's Manhattan, sure, but it seemed that every annoying tourist in the Western Hemisphere had come out to play, and was in line to catch the ferry to Ellis Island.  And cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

There is no Ellen, only Zool.  Craig and I discussed how Ghostbusters would make a really great musical.  It has everything - action, love fulfilled, love unrequited, comic relief...  Ask us about it sometime, and we'll tell you how you can invest.

We went on a "Harbor Lights" boat tour, which turned out to be really nice.  It was great to sit and feel the breeze after a day of walking.  Here's a view of the Empire State Building.  Our hotel is the building covering it up on the lower right hand side - it says "New Yorker" across the top.  The location was really fabulous, and everything else was....adequate.

I think Circle Line Ferries must have their boat tours calculated to the minute for maximum photo-taking happiness.

Grr.  Ellen is super scary. 

Craig wanted to be a special little snowflake when he was younger, so his favorite dinosaur was Triceratops, not T Rex.   

Yankee Stadium!  Alex Rodriguez hit a home run into the seats above us here in left field. 

The Temple of Dendur, reassembled in the Met.  This was a really cool display to just walk around.  The museum is right on Central Park, so there was a girls' soccer workshop going on just outside the glass wall. 

Just outside the Cloisters, which is the Met's outpost of medieval art and architecture.  I loved it - it was a great break from noise and dirt and bustle.  And, for the most part, the annoying brand of tourists.

Good morning!  We ate breakfast outside at Rockefeller Center before moving on to a tour of the NYC Public Library.

Craig drove us out of Manhattan with no incident.  In fact, the worst part of getting out of the city was hauling our luggage through the subway.

We drove up through the Catskills to Cooperstown, where we stayed at the best hotel ever.  Having cookies and lemonade on the porch was a great antidote to the long drive.

Inside the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  It's not as big as we thought it was going to be - there's just not room to display all the things they have archived.

There was a lot to like about Cooperstown beyond baseball.  This is on the shores of Lake Otsego, behind the Fenimore Art Museum.  There was also a living history museum, and tons of nice restaurants and breweries.  All of the houses were gorgeous and well-maintained.

From Cooperstown, we drove on to Niagara Falls, where we got wet.  Very wet.

This gives you a better perspective of where we were standing in the front shot - you can see maroon decking just to the right of the falls behind Craig.  We took an elevator down from the top of the bluff, then walked out under all the spray on the decks.  At one point, we were only 15 feet from the bottom of the falls, where the water hits at 70 miles per hour.

We shelled out for a room with a view of the Falls, and here's the payoff.  It was great to crash at the end of the day and just be able to sit and look at this whenever we wanted to.  The area around the actual falls is nice, but in just a couple of blocks, it turns into a soulsucking Disneyland/Vegas hybrid designed to surgically separate you from your money.  Think wax museums and a WWE store.  So, we spent a lot of time just looking.  And it was worth it.

We're glad to be back, and are gearing up for a fall and winter full of basement renovations.  There are a few other things going on with the house that I'll cover in good time.  I also froze 25 pounds of Roma tomatoes from our CSA farm, so I'm sure there will be a post about marinara sauce in the future.  Also, your reward for reading through all our pictures is the news that Craig has a new job.  He'll be the third attorney in a three-attorney general practice firm, and he starts on Monday the 24th.  Woo, Craig!

Comments

[glennae]

Congratulations Craig!

It sounds like you had a nice long vacation. Someday we'll have one of those. Thanks for all the pics!

[Erica Wehner]

It sounds like you were in NYC about the same time Tony and I were there. We were there for 5 days over Labor Day weekend and we had a blast. We stayed at a hostel in the upper west side and saw everything you listed and more except the Cloisters and Yankee Stadium. We wanted to see both but simply ran out of time. Next time you go, get to the ticket booth for the Statue of Liberty/ Ellis Island Ferry at 8 am and there is absolutely no line. We zipped right through.

[Ellen]

Too bad we didn't know - we could have had dinner!

We ended up coming back for the Ellis Island ferry on another day at about 10:30, and had no problems at all. It was just snaking around Battery Park on Sunday, though. It must have been two or three hours.

[Craig]

We did more too. Just no pictures from MoMA, the Guggenheim, The Museum of the City of New York, Washington Square, Patsy's Pizza in Spanish Harlem, etc! We had so much fun!

[Nadja]

Great pics! Makes me remember our trip to niagra... I think we have a matching pic of me in a poncho!
:)

[Paddy]

Nice pics. I think so you really enjoyed your holidays at all these places. I also visited one of the hotels in Europe recently.