First to Princeton, Then to New York

We were up and at 'em first thing in the morning again to make the 1 1/2 hour drive to Princeton, New Jersey. Not only is the campus and architecture beautiful, but the surrounding town is really neat too. (And by the way, the word "campus" was first coined at Princeton in reference to college "yards," because "yards" just didn't do the expansive grounds justice.)

We had a speed talker at the info session again, which I've learned I like sooo much better then the slow, deliberate speaker. They cover so much more and are so much easier to listen to.

After grabbing souvenir t's at the bookstore and some lunch to eat in the car, we drove another 1 1/2 hours to Manhattan. Our first stop in the city was the laundromat ($32 to have someone wash and fold 7 days of laundry for 6 people. I would pay that in a heartbeat at home to have someone take care of laundry for me! What a steal!)

Then Dan dropped us off at The Palace hotel and returned the rental car so we wouldn't have to pay for it in the city. I tried to check-in and we hit our first snag of our 17 day trip--our reservation was for the next day. Yikes, the hotel was sold out and so was everywhere else. By the time Dan got back, I was surfing expedia on my iPad, Marty had the concierge get us hooked up with wi-fi so we could surf on Dan's laptop and Dan started surfing Hotels.com. Pretty sure we got the last hotel rooms in the city for that night. Called my cousin who manages another hotel and later when she called me back she said she was amazed we could find something. The city was sold out!

We stayed downtown with our rooms overlooking Ground Zero which was actually pretty cool.

Two pools are placed as a memorial where the Twin Towers used to be. The building under construction will be the tallest Freedom Tower and the newest tallest building in New York City. Currently it's only half-way built.

We had enough time to get to the room, change and rush to dinner at Max Brenners. 

Specializes in chocolate and desserts. Real food was good too, but the shakes everyone got with dinner were heavenly!

From there we jumped on the subway up to Times Square to see The Lion King. Awesome!
Nick got really excited when he saw his first Subway rat! "Oh! I spotted one! I see it! There's a subway rat right there! Do you see it? Look!"
Didn't think it was gross at all, just really excited to see a bit of nature underground!