The Dahl Family: The Wrap Up

This will be a long entry, but let's finish this story. On Sunday morning we donned our Sunday clothes again and headed for the subway to find the ward building.

It just so happens that the ward meets in the temple! When the Manhattan Temple was built, a ward "building" was included on the 3rd floor. There is also a distribution center and family history center inside. We popped out of the subway, and there across the street was the Temple.

We stepped inside and to the left were the doors to the temple (in the picture), and to the right was a hallway to the elevator.

We took the elevator to the 3rd floor. Isn't the carving on the elevator walls cool?

Once you were in the chapel, you could have been in any ward building in the US. Except this one has an amazing pipe organ. The organist was playing a stirring prelude (he had "skills" if you know what I mean). Since the organist was listed in the program, Dan looked him up on Google and found that he had a PhD in music. We sang "If you could hie to Kolob" for the rest hymn. He "let out all the stops". Wow. It was a unique experience.

This picture doesn't want to rotate, so you will have to look at it with your head tilted! After church and some lunch, we visited the Discovery museum which was featuring a Harry Potter exhibit.

Since we love all things Harry Potter, we enjoyed all the items from the movie sets and remembering the movie they were featured in. Dan even found a perfect Dumbledore hat in the gift shop.

We rounded out the day with a visit to the Observation Deck on the Empire State Building. Since we had visited the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Center) in the day time, we decided an evening visit to the Empire State Building would be appropriate.

The lobby.

On our way up.

We reached the observation deck at just the right moment. It was very crowded, but if you were patient, people would look at the view and then move on, and we would slip in for a good look at the lights of the City. We even caught the sunset. This is looking west over the Hudson.

This is looking northwest to Times Square. All those lights are coming from Times Square. The bright spot at the top of the building in the middle of the picture is the new years ball.

We took LOTS of pictures, but I will just include this last one of the Bank of America building (on the right). It was a beautiful evening with a cool breeze and gorgeous views. After snapping plenty of pictures, we headed back to our room for an early evening. We had early tickets to the Statue of Liberty the next morning and needed our sleep.

We boarded the ferry to Liberty Island about 8:45 am on Monday morning. We had tickets to the crown, and determined that it was best to complete that activity early since it would be getting pretty hot in the statue as the day went on.

Here we are with our coveted crown access wrist bands. They only issue about 240 crown tickets each day. You have to buy them ahead of time because they seldom have same-day tickets. Michelle didn't attempt the climb to the crown, but had a ticket anyway to allow her to stay with the rest of the family. When we got to the point of climbing the stairs, Michelle took the elevator to the observation deck and enjoyed the views there while she waited for everyone.

Dan and Bryce before heading up the stairs to the crown. Behind them is an older torch that was used on the statue.

This is not the original torch. It seems the original was not lit from within. After the statue was installed, they decided if the torch was lit it could serve as a lighthouse of sorts and would be a good landmark at night. The torch went through several design changes, and after many years was replaced with the current torch because the glass was difficult to maintain, and the light it provided was not adequate. The current torch is made of copper and gilded with gold. It is lit by shining lights on it. It was cool to see this old torch up close.

Dan and the boys climbed the steps to the crown and took lots of pictures looking out. Here is the view they had of the book Lady Liberty is holding.

Here they are in the crown!

Check out the stairs they had to climb up and then down.

There is also a museum chronicling the building of the statue and placing it on Liberty Island. This is a replica of the face and is the actual size. (Adam was done with the museum at this point, but we continued on anyway. That's what families are for - to torture their children with museum visits!)

Here is Michelle by the actual size foot. Can you imagine what the statue looked like before the copper corroded?

After the ferry ride back to Manhattan, it was a subway ride to the hotel. I'm not sure if Adam is smiling because we are headed back to the hotel, or because he loves subway rides.

After some rest in our room, we changed clothes and were back on the subway on our way to Katz's Deli for dinner.

Here we are inside Katz's. Dan wanted to eat here because he grew up eating at Miracle Mile Deli in Phoenix, and had always heard about Katz's, the oldest deli in Manhattan. Many people seek out this deli these days because a scene from the movie "When Harry Met Sally" was filmed here.

Here's Dan with his chocolate egg cream, which strangely enough contains no eggs.

Here is just a portion of the food we ordered. We ordered more than the four of us could eat, but there were some things we just had to try. Check out the pile of pickles they bring you to snack on as an appetizer. Instead of a bread basket, or a basket of tortilla chips - here you get pickles.

After dinner we caught the bus to a small theatre nearby for Monday Night Magic. It was a tiny theatre with three acts. During intermission they had several magicians in the lobby and in the theatre doing "close up" magic tricks. Ask the boys to show you the broken arm trick. It was a great evening.

On our last full day in New York, we headed for Central Park. Although we had driven by it several times, we wanted to actually go for a walk in the park.

Not far down the trail, we found this fellow making beautiful music on his stringed instrument. As Dan and Bryce were admiring his talent, he offered to have Dan try his hand at it.

The look on Dan's face should tell you how his music sounded.

What a beautiful oasis in the middle of the city. Although we only saw a small corner of it, Central Park lived up to the hype.

We had planned to see the last Harry Potter movie while we were in NYC. Dan had talked to someone at work, and they had suggested the Ziegfield Cinema would be a great place to see it. Sadly when we got there, it was closed because they were having a premiere that night with Steve Carell, but they were helpful and directed us to this AMC complex on the famous 42nd Street.

This complex had 25 theatres in a 10-15 story building. We went up at least 8 escalators to get to our theatre! When we came out, we stepped out onto the balcony on our floor and found we were right behind the new years ball!

That afternoon we ventured over to the Chelsea Market. This is an old warehouse that now houses dozens of small eateries. It is also home of the Food Network which gets lots of air time at our house.

The place was very busy. It took some quick eyes to spot someone leaving a table so we could nab it. The hall is lined with small tables. You go get your food from your store of choice and then sit in the hallway and eat while you people watch. As we were eating, Bryce spotted Alton Brown (the star of Good Eats - one of our favorite Food Network shows). We each got dinner from a different store, and it was all delicious. The place had about four bakeries, so we had to take some treats home for later.

Yes, we are almost done! On Wednesday, our flight wasn't until 5 pm, so we started our day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You really need a week to see every corner of this museum, and we were there for two hours.

The American impressionists wing was sadly closed for renovation, but we found some very cool things as we roamed the halls. Adam recognized this Egyptian cat from his study of Egypt at school.

This is the temple of Dendur from Egypt that has been reconstructed inside the museum. It would have flooded when the Aswan Dam was built, so Egypt gave it to the United States.