New York-Part 1

I am overwhelmed with all the pictures I took and organizing, deleting the bad ones and editing some or making collages has been a chore that I've put off long enough.
So I will just jump in and start and even though I don't know how many parts I'll make this post so please hang in there with me. I want to cover my whole trip and since it was a long one it may take me a few days to share it all.
I could just post some pics and say how lovely it all was but that wouldn't be justice to all the many things we did and the fun we had. (of course you may do just that and look at the pics and skip my blabbering :)
First and most of all we want to send our hugs and love to our good friends Gogu and Gina for indeed being the perfect hosts, for how much they spoiled us and for all the yummy food and making their house a nice place for us to stay. They waited for us at the airport and drove us home to an excellent breakfast. Also thank you to my dear, dear parents who are just the most wonderful people on earth. I cannot even begin to say how much they've really done for us always. Thank you for taking care of our kiddies. They had a blast with you.

 We flew at night and only got about 3 hours of sleep on our first flight which was 4.5 hours anyway. The second flight was just too short so with not much sleep we were pretty tired on Thursday.  But I chose a night flight so I don't waste a day on the plane and I didn't want to waste a day sleeping. Our first stop was Saint John The Divine Church in Harlem (N. Manhattan). Being our first place I took way too many pictures and stayed here way too long. But I loved it. I was trying hard to get a good picture of the majestic stained glass window and my friends found me on the floor trying to steady my camera since it was too dark to take a  good shot by hand. Then Gogu lent me his mini tripod and that helped a lot and also that I have one of those remotes wasn't too bad either.

I am pleased with the picture. I am always in awe with the craftsmanship of all these old churches, the work that went into them, the details. Just amazing.

On our way out we heard the ugliest sounds. Turns out peacocks are not lovely singers. 

This is what was in the church's garden. How amazing and pretty is that? This totally topped the cake. :)
Next we headed to Columbia University, Grant's Mausoleum and then Riverside Church.

Hamilton's statue on the Columbia University campus. 

Grant's Mausoleum

 Riverside Church

 View of Riverside from Grant's Mausoleum. We went all the way up in that tower.

Detail from outside of Riverside. The inside pics didn't turn out so well. 

 Of course we couldn't end the day but with thinking of food. We stopped by the coolest store, Zabar's. Lovely stuff. They had so so many kinds of foods and those guys were just sweet to want to get their picture taken.

We also got famous bagels and on the way home our friends took us right through Times Square and on to Queens we went.
Well, see you in part 2. This was Day 1 for us. We did so much every day, walking up to 13 hours at a time. It's fun to write about it and just relive it all.