New York City, NY – June 14, 2008

The four of us left our boats this morning at 8:00 and walked about 1 block to the PATH. The PATH is the New Jersey subway system and runs from New Jersey under the Hudson River and makes several stops in New York City. We had a little difficulty figuring out how to get the tickets and discovered we had been trying the wrong machines. We finally figured it out and took the PATH to West 34th and Broadway.

We walked several blocks just looking around and finding such places as Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Macy’s and many Broadway theaters. We also needed to get to the Marriott Hotel as early as we could to get in line for half-price tickets for a Broadway show. Margaret and Beth waited in line while Bob and Darrell found a coffee shop and had a break. Once they opened at 10 a.m. the line moved very quickly. By 10:15 we had very good tickets to Mama Mia.

We saw many other tourists, every 4th person seemed to have a camera. While it wasn’t very crowded this morning, by noon it was packed with people. We had to check out Rockefeller Center because we may try to do the tourist thing Monday morning and get on the Today show. There were many policemen all around. We saw ‘Living Statues’, musicians playing on corners and a man playing a guitar wearing only briefs (the naked cowboy.) Many people were having their picture taken with him.

We bought 48 hour passes on a tour bus, a double-decker with an open top. The package we bought goes Uptown, Downtown, Brooklyn and a Night tour. It stops at many of the attractions tourists would like to see and you can get on and off as often as you want. We thought we could see a few things before our matinee but got off after a few stops so we wouldn’t be rushed and could have a leisurely lunch before our matinee.

After a delicious and large lunch we got to Winter Garden Theatre in plenty of time to get to our seats and get ready for the wonderful performance. We had seen it before and we had enjoyed it very much. We were happy to see it again and it was so fun to see Bob and Margaret enjoy it.

Our plan was to get back on a tour bus after Mama Mia but it had started raining. We abandoned our plan and decided to go back to our boats. Unfortunately it was a few blocks to any subway that would take us to the PATH which would then take us back to New Jersey. We got quite wet.