I know we’ve already posted some things about New York, but here is the first half of our official rundown of our vacation. Consider yourself trapped in our living room watching our boring slideshow, because you’re stuck here, and if you don’t read the whole thing, WE’LL KNOW!

Simply put, the trip was awesome. It was only a little over two days, but they were packed, so I will split it into two posts, along with pictures. I had never been to New York, and Bethy hadn’t been there since she was a kid, so it was a great experience. I didn’t know what to expect, but I must have had somewhat low expectations, because it took me by surprise how much I absolutely loved the city.

On Thursday, we dropped our kids off at Emily’s house (you’re the best!) at about 2:30 in the p.m. and headed off to the airport, where we got on our non-stop flight to New York. We landed at 11:00 p.m. New York time, and it turned out we had reservations at only the second hotel we went to! What luck! By then, it was about 12:30, and we were starving, so we found a Chinese place that was open until 2 a.m. and had some food delivered to our hotel room. We ate our egg rolls and watched the specials about 9/11 (specifically, MSNBC’s replaying of their newscast from that morning), which brought us both close to tears all over again. We stayed up way too late watching that (for some reason, it felt even more real watching it in New York), so we didn’t get to bed until about 3:30 a.m. We slept in a little bit on Friday, rolling out of bed at 8:30 and meeting up in the lobby for breakfast with my cousin Nathan, his wife Devin, and their 3-month-old baby girl Kylie, who flew in from California to do the vacation with us. Kylie is adorable, and she was as good as you could ever hope a baby would be on vacation. Quite the little trooper.

We had planned to take the shuttle back to the airport, then take a train from there to the subway, but we decided that since we were already running a little late, we’d take a taxi instead. I wanted to have the experience of riding in a real New York taxi, but the “taxi” service the hotel works with is closer to a limousine service, so we rode to the subway in a Lincoln Towncar with nice leather seats. So the cabbie took us to the subway, where we had our first subway experience:

I had never been on the subway, and Beth had only been on the Washington DC subway when she was 9, so it was a new experience for both of us. We bought unlimited day passes both days so we could ride the subway whenever we wanted to and not have to pay each time. So that first morning, we hopped on and rode it all the way to Times Square. We were impressed by how well New Yorkers have the subways timed, so they always managed to get to the station right before the train comes, while we tourists always seemed to get there right after. It’s okay, though — it was fairly cool that first day, so it was only about 120 degrees down on the platforms. New Yorkers aren’t shy either — they’ll sit as close to you as they want, even if “as close as they want” could be interpreted as “on your lap.” I expected to get motion sickness on the subway, but I did okay despite the bumpiness and the speed. But we decided that next time we go, we will stay in Manhattan so we don’t have to take such a long ride into the city.

Times Square was very crowded but very awesome. I usually hate one-way streets, but as a pedestrian I love them, because you only have to look one way before crossing. (You might think that the flashing red hand and white walking man would tell you when to cross, but you would be stupid and wouldn’t last a minute in New York!) We saw the naked cowboy, who runs around Times Square holding his guitar and wearing only either briefs or a diaper (I couldn’t tell which) and a cowboy hat. I had never heard of him, but I’ve since learned that he filed a $4 million lawsuit against M&M for using his likeness in a commercial without his permission. All I know is that $4 million will buy a whole lot of underwear.

We went to the Hershey’s store and the M&M store at Times Square, which is really a stupid thing for people on diets to do, but we were very disciplined and only ate the free candy samples they gave us for buying a t-shirt. (We returned the shirt for a different size the next day, but they didn’t give us more samples. Stingy jerks.)

After Times Square, we took the subway up to Central Park. By the time we got there, it had started to rain. As we looked at the map of Central Park, we realized that it is ridiculously huge, and the things we wanted to see (the old carousel and the fountain from “Friends”) are on opposite sides of the park, which meant it would be a wicked long walk to do it all. Knowing that we only had a few hours before we needed to be at Yankee Stadium, we decided to take a pedicab (which is a fancy word for a rickshaw attached to a bike, and since English is not the native language for anyone working at Central Park, I actually just had to look up what the word they were saying actually was). After negotiating our tour down to $50 per couple, Nathan and I had a snack while waiting for the bikes.

Our first stop was the carousel, although we found out that the pedicabs aren’t actually supposed to stop at the carousel and that the guy we negotiated with had told us what we wanted to hear just to get our business. But the guys stopped for us anyway, and we got to ride the second-oldest carousel in the country.

Throughout the course of the tour, our tour guides explained all the sights in their broken English. The guy who did most of the talking seems to really love “Home Alone 2,” as he kept pointing out where scenes from that movie were filmed. But he didn’t say “Home Alone 2,” he said “Home Alone the Second Part.” And he had trouble saying his numbers, so he would often say things like “That building was build in 1853rd” or “The park is 872nd acres” or whatever. We did discover that nearly every movie EVER made was filmed in Central Park.

We finally got to the highlight of our trip: the fountain from “Friends”! (Not really the highlight, but hey, we were excited.)

After the fountain, we got off the pedicab and walked through Strawberry Fields, a tribute to John Lennon. It was pretty cool, especially this at the end:

We saw where John Lennon was shot and where Marilyn Monroe used to live and where Madonna lives and a bunch of stuff, and then we were done with Central Park. We walked to a deli and got some lunch, and then we walked up to see the Manhattan Temple.

By this time it was pouring rain, and we were hoping against hope that it would stop so our Yankee game — you know, the whole reason for the trip — wouldn’t get rained out. We hopped back on the subway and headed up to the Bronx to Yankee Stadium.

Guess what? It didn’t stop raining.

Two hours later, it still hadn’t stopped raining.

As it became apparent that there would be no baseball played that night, we focused on the fact that we were in Yankee Stadium! I had heard that the stadium itself isn’t all that impressive, and while I guess that’s probably true compared to the fancy new stadiums that almost all the teams have now, I thought it was absolutely amazing. Sitting there in right field, where Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and Reggie Jackson and Don Mattingly had all hit home runs — seriously, the Yankees have had some great left-handed hitters — it was crazy cool. We walked around the stadium, and I stopped near first base and marveled that I was standing 50 feet from where Gehrig — my second-favorite player of all time — used to play the field, and only a few more feet from where he gave his famous speech. “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” I pictured Don Larsen jumping into Yogi Berra’s arms after his perfect game in the 1956 World Series. I pictured Reggie hitting three home runs in one World Series game against the Dodgers when I was only a few months old (booooo). I thought about Maris stepping out of the first-base dugout to tip his hat to the crowd after hitting his 61st homer in 1961. I thought about Casey Stengel and Billy Martin and Miller Huggins and Billy Martin and Joe McCarthy and Billy Martin and Ralph Houk and Billy Martin and Joe Torre and Billy Martin, legendary men who had managed the Yankees.

I think everyone has one passion that they feel like they should probably be embarrassed about, but instead they are just proud of it. For me, that has always been baseball. You know that spark in your brain that happens when you hear your name? The one that says, “Hey, that’s me!” Well, I get that same feeling when I hear the words “baseball” or “Dodgers.” Those things might not define me as much as my actual name, but they are every bit as much my personal identity. So standing there in Yankee Stadium, surrounded by so many things that were unfamiliar — the subways, the bathrooms that make you feel like you’re going to get hepatitis just by walking into them, guys named Vinnie — I felt completely and totally at home. It probably seems weird, it might seem cheesy or goofy, but hey, it’s my blog, I can wax pathetic all I want!

At about 8:30, they officially announced that the game had been postponed and rescheduled for 7:05 the next night. That meant we officially had to start thinking about what we were going to do with our tickets to see Wicked at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday. I had kicked around the idea of just going to see Wicked, reasoning that I had now been to Yankee Stadium and done that whole thing. I was still kicking around the idea until they officially announced the postponement, and I realized that I really needed to see some baseball played for my experience to be complete. Wicked will be on Broadway for a long time, but this was our last chance to see a game at “The House that Ruth Built.” (Next time we build a house, I am TOTALLY hiring someone named Ruth to do some part of it, just so I can call it the house that Ruth built.)

So we hopped on the subway and headed back to the hotel, weary and wet and annoyed by the Tampa Bay Rays fans (really? I didn’t know those existed) on the subway with us who had the bodies of 25-year-olds but the brains of 14-year-olds and the ability to shut up of however-old-you-are-when-you-don’t-know-how-to-shut-up-year-olds. We finally switched trains, but we accidentally got on the right train going the wrong direction, so we got off at the next exit to turn around. Well, MOST of us got off, anyway. Somehow Devin was slower than the rest of us, so while Bethy, Nathan, Kylie, and I all got off the train, Devin had to go to the next stop. And Nathan had her subway pass AND all their money, so we waited for about a half-hour before we realized she wasn’t on her way back, and then Bethy and I waited another half-hour while Nathan went north to find her and bring her back. So we ended up getting home about as late as we would have if the game had actually been played, and we were tired and wet and hungry. We got some real authentic New York cuisine (Papa John’s pizza), I put our Wicked tickets up for sale on Craigslist, and we went to bed, not knowing that tomorrow would be even longer…

To be continued…