This past weekend, we took a quick trip to NJ and NY. Because I was supposed to be in Israel, Dave had booked cheap plane tickets for him and the boys to visit family in NJ while I was away. Once I ended up not being in Israel, we didn’t know if we would still take the trip, but we ended up getting me a ticket on their flight to NY and a different flight home. I took very few pictures, but here’s how the trip went!
We flew to NY on Thursday evening. Once we landed, we rented a car to get to NJ, where we stayed with our nephew. He got back from Israel earlier in the week. In the morning, we made our first trip to my brother-in-law’s restaurant – where we tend to eat all of our meals in NJ.
Simon and his cousin – the one we stayed with:
We also shopped for food for Shabbat and then it was time to head to NYC by way of Jersey City, where we returned the rental car. We took the Path to the Occulus.
From there we rented bikes and I almost died – not really, but I was not very good at riding in narrow areas! The boys were so much faster than me too. We took the bikes to the High Line and walked from there to Penn Station.
We met Gabbie at the Port Authority, as she took the bus down from UMass to meet us. We also walked to Times Square for what turned out to be no reason at all. It was pretty hot out too.
We headed back to NJ on the bus and then spent a nice Shabbat with our family. The kids had fun with two of their cousins who were around! Saturday night, we went to American Dream and just walked around a bit and had some Cinnabun. Then on Sunday we visited some Judaica stores, went to my brother-in-law’s restaurant again, and took the bus to the city, where Gabbie caught her bus back to MA. It was pouring out, which put a damper on things, but the rest of us went to the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side. First, we stopped at the Pickle Guys!
We toured recreations of apartments where a Jewish family and an Italian family lived in the early 1900s.
That is the floor that is original to the building. Zachary was very interested in the history of the area and interacted a lot with our tour guide! We went across the street to a small cafe and in talking with the owner, realized that a friend of ours had been there that same morning (the owner connected it since we both mentioned Kansas). So I texted her and freaked her out by knowing where she’d been that day!
From there, we went back to NJ on the train this time and to Dave’s parents’ house for Chinese food.
Monday morning it was straight back to the city on the bus to catch the subway to the airport. I was flying out of LaGuardia while Dave and the boys were out of JFK. I had to be early for my flight since theirs was leaving first, but they were delayed and we ended up getting back just about the same time.
So that wraps our quick weekend visit – we’ll be there again over Thanksgiving!