We got up early so we could ride with my Aunt and Uncle into New York where they worked in Chinatown. This was perfect since our first stop in any city with a Chinatown is Chinatown! We explored Chinatown which had a very authentic feel to it with narrow, crowded streets lined with all manner of Chinese restaurants, grocery stores as well as other businesses. We passed by the smallest, cutest mini police car to a park next to Chinatown full of old people gambling at cards. Players all got six cards. They chose their highest and lowest card. If their high card was higher than the dealer and the low card was lower than the dealer’s then they won what looked like a minimum $20 bet. We stopped to take a look and Holly asked in a loud voice “Hey, isn’t this illegal?” This was followed by side looks all around as money exchanged hands.
Next we walked to the World Trade Center to visit the 9/11 memorial. The memorial was very well done with two square waterfalls falling endlessly into the ground and the names of the victims along the rails.
A quick visit to the Oculus shopping and transit center nearby and we walked back to Chinatown where we had lunch with my Aunt and Uncle where we were joined by one of my cousins.
In the afternoon my cousin Bobby took us to Seaport, a small, unfinished shopping and dining area that had a nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Seaport was a bit of a disappointment as there was not much there but we found a couple of very cute art installations that we managed to spend a huge amount of time photographing before we returned to Chinatown. We met my Aunt and Uncle as they finished work and they drove us the 1 hour commute back to New Jersey.
The next day we decided to have a rest and chilled out in Rover. We wanted to see a Broadway show while we were in New York so I bought tickets to The Lion King for the next day, Wednesday. They were pretty pricey at about $100 a ticket but it was the hottest show currently on Broadway and most suitable for kids. Since the show was in the evening I also booked us a night at the Intercontinental Hotel in Times Square. The hotel would normally cost over $350 a night but I used one of our free night certificates from our IHG cards so it didn’t cost us anything.