NYC - Day 5

It's Christmas Eve!

We got up relatively early today, took the train down to Ground Zero and the 9/11 Tribute Center. There was a lot of construction going on at Ground Zero, so there wasn't much to see, but the Tribute Center across the street was pretty amazing. From my understanding, it's a makeshift memorial until they complete the one that will exist at the former WTC site.

We then walked through the Financial District, saw Wall Street, and the NYSE.... Stefan wanted to see the famous bull, so we went and saw it.... not realizing what a tourist attraction it was. We tried to get a picture of the bull by itself, but people just kept running to it to get their picture with it, that we stood there for over 20 minutes and have tons of pictures of random people with the bull, none of it by itself.

We took the train to Brooklyn and had lunch at the original Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge. We waited in line outside for about 30 minutes (which we understood was a pretty short line), and it was WELL worth the wait!! We tried to find Junior's Cheesecakes (yes, even after we were stuffed from the pizza) but couldn't find it so we headed back towards the Brooklyn Bridge. The walk across the bridge was so beautiful--- I think it was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The history and architecture was incredible.

We took the train again back to the hotel and then had Christmas Eve dinner at Bobby Van's near Times Square. Before calling it a night, we went back to Rockefeller and realized that EVERYONE apparently goes to see the tree on Christmas Eve. There were so many people there, we didn't stay long. We looked at the window displays on 5th Avenue and couldn't believe the creativity and amount of work that must go into getting these set up every year. Tons of beautiful lights and decorations.... perfect for Christmas!