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Start Spreading The News….



…we saw New York City from New Jersey! ? HA



Today was a beautiful day with perfect weather and friendly New Jersey folks! So… let’s back-up… we (as usual) left home late and arrived in St Louis at almost 5 o’clock exactly yesterday. The traffic was crazy. Why do we do these things to ourselves? We stayed at a Hilton (Hampton) next to the airport. The receptionist at the check-in desk used to work for Lisa and she lived in Thayer. It’s a small world folks. We started watching the Nationals beat the Astros in Game 1 of the World Series and fell asleep during the end. We left our hotel room at 3am this morning. It was cold and windy in St Louis when we left. We slept on our flight to Baltimore for 2 hours. Our next flight was a super short flight to New Jersey. It was beautiful flying low and seeing all the trees changing into their gorgeous autumn colors - it looked like a Hallmark movie scene. We also could see NYC before we ever landed. We took the train from the airport and again you have gorgeous views of NYC. It was exciting! It was like pumping adrenaline in me. We checked into our large and busy hotel here in New Jersey before 10:30am. You can see the New York City skyline from the corner window next to our hotel room on the 7^th floor. We threw down our bags and took an Uber to Carlo’s Bakery – the famous bakery where The Cake Boss show is filmed. The staff in that store are nice and helpful. We purchased several goodies… including a slice of cake (super sweet frosting but moist cake), a chocolate cannoli (I didn’t like it – took one bite and left it for Kamie who said the cannoli we had in Sicily was much better), some lip balm, etc. The total was $1,000. Ha Not really but nothing was cheap. We walked next door to a busy Italian pizza place selling pizza by the slice and no one spoke English. The slices were huge. We got two slices and a bottled water for under $10. My slice was so-so and I didn’t finish it. Kamie’s was super good and he shared a couple of bites with me. It was a beautiful day - sunny, windy and 62 degrees. We walked a couple of blocks to Pier Park so we could look across the Hudson at New York City. We could identify a couple of the buildings (Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, One World Trade, etc). We were a six minute water ride from NYC! The park was peaceful. Some nice guy let me pet his Yorkie he was walking. The fall trees in the park were just starting to turn orange. We watched the fat geese feasting on crumbs, the exercisers walking as fast as possible with their headphones on, the ladies with the babies enjoying a stroll, the dog walkers, and the tourists. We walked all the way around the park and enjoyed about an hour or so of simply refreshing outdoor time with some great views. Around 3pm, we both crashed from lack of sleep so we Ubered back to our hotel. We shut our blinds and slept for about 2 hours. It was needed. Tonight we explored this huge hotel we are staying in - there are groups of high school girls here, an Asian travel group (they needed to ask Kamie for a lighter but did not know the words but we got the gist), a bunch of cruisers it seems, and a lot of business people. The hotel has lounge areas everywhere, a full restaurant, a bar, a Starbucks, etc… every area is packed with people mingling! The only thing the hotel is missing is a gift shop. We walked to the hotel next door because we asked around and learned their gift shop sells luggage. We had a suitcase handle break today rendering the suitcase unusable. We got a great piece of luggage in a gift shop in a large Ramada hotel in New Jersey for half the price of a suitcase of the same size at Wal-Mart at home. Strange, huh? Plus, we got a nice walk in tonight after dinner. About dinner… I had a chicken wrap and Kamie had carnitas tacos. Do you know what that means? The menu said fish tacos and carnitas tacos. Kamie ordered the carnitas tacos and I was like “What did you just order?” because the menu did not explain what carnitas means. Pork. Carnitas means braised pork. Well, we are back in our room watching Game 2 of the World Series and again watching the Nationals beat the Astros! YAY! Today was a good day. I'm looking forward to unpacking tomorrow on the cruise ship and making our cabin a home-away-from-home for a few days. The warm weather from Missouri has followed us to the east coast as we are predicted to have an unseasonably warm day of 69 and sunny tomorrow…. I hear ya’ll might get snow?! LOL

PS – My watch shows… drumroll….9044 steps for me today!

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