New York City day 1

For my birthday Matt bought me a trip to NYC to visit my aunt Karen, who teaches at NYU. I flew in on a red-eye last night and arrived at 8am this morning. We got started right away with a boat tour around Manhattan to see all the sights from the water. It was a good preliminary activity - now I feel a bit familiar with the different areas of the city and kind of where everything is. After that, we ate dinner at the Shake Shack (delicious burgers, fries, and shakes!) and then walked around Times Square. I'm exhausted but I'm having tons of fun. I miss Matt and Owen, but frequent phone calls and texts are helping out. I'll be here for 9 days, and after today's tour, I'm so excited to see the rest of the city!

Karen and me waiting for the boat tour to begin.

Part of the city skyline.

Lady Liberty from the water. It's both bigger and smaller than I thought it would be (I know that's weird :)

Brooklyn Bridge.

Times Square Broadway play posters. We're going to see Catch Me If You Can and How To Suceed in Business Without Really Trying (with Harry Potter as the main character!). SO excited.

Times Square!

Hershey store in Times Square. LOVE.

We're on that jumbotron! If you divide the screen into four quadrants, we're in the top left quadrant in the bottom right corner. Make sense?? :) (This made me think of the line in Despicable Me: "We stole the Times Square Jumbotron!")

Ferris wheel inside the Toys R Us on Times Square.

This picture is for Owen... it's a Kung Fu Panda 2 trailer on the jumbotron. 

Don't know if I'll blog every day (likely not), but I'll definitely be taking lots of pictures! I'm so excited to be here! Thanks for a great birthday present, Matt!