Aubrey's Visit- Empire State Building

So after arming ourselves with city friends baby gear, we ventured into the city on a cold, rainy day. We planned on doing the Empire State building...I know, not the smartest on a day with that kind of weather. Before going to the top, we darted into Starbucks for some steamers. It was a mini-disaster: stroller was in the way, hard to find a table, etc. A table opened up and Aubrey went to save it. I pushed the stroller through a somewhat narrow space and it bumped into a wobbly table & knocked over a lady's coffee. I said to heck with it and we headed over to the ESB to go to the lookout, but I wasn't exactly in a peachy mood. This is the awesome picture that we got forced to take:

The good news is that there was no wait to get to the top; the bad news is that there was no wait because it was FREEZING at the top- the rain was snow that high up. So we bundled Auralia and managed as much time on the observation deck as we could. I think we lasted about 20 minutes. Here's some awesome shots of our time at the Empire State Building:

Yes- there was a man inside of it. Yes- it was very creep.

Me in a poncho... no laughing, you gotta do whatever it takes to survive in the city.

In the center of the picture you can see the 'Macy's' sign. That Macy's takes up a whole city block and is the largest Macy's in the world. It's 10 stories of shopping! They have amazing displays at Christmas time, and sponsor the Thanksgiving Day parade. Also where the 1947 "Miracle on 34th Street" was filmed.

This is downtown Manhattan- where Wallstreet is at and also a ferry to go to the Statue of Liberty. You can barely make out the Statue of Liberty on the first island to the right of downtown.

A great shot of the Chrysler building.

My beautiful sister!

You can barely see Central Park in this photo. It's the bushy patch in the middle of the photo.

Auralia being a good sport!

The Empire State Building from the bottom

Okay funny story. Down in the ESB lobby there were these beautiful displays that Aubrey was taking pictures of. This cute old couple was standing to the left of it and Aubrey asked them if they minded if she take a quick photo of the display. They apparently thought she wanted a picture of them because he grabbed his wife and they scooched in and smiled and he told us about how they have been married for 60 years. Aubrey looked at me like, "what the heck am I supposed to do?" so she smiled back and snapped a photo of them. They were adorable :)

Some fun facts about the Empire State Building:

• There are 102 floors; 1,860 steps to the top, 6,500 windows
• it stands 1,250 feet tall
• it was a Great Depression project that actually finished ahead of schedule only taking a year and 45 days to complete
• it cost $40 million to build!
• no one lives in the building, it's just rented as office spaces