Heather, Lanette, and Molly!!

So, I had some Michigan visitors in the city yesterday! Heather, Lanette, and Molly took a bus up from Baltimore. I met them around 10:30 and gave them a whirlwind tour of NYC. First stop was Times Square where they got to see it in all of its craziness. (Although it wasn't very busy at all... I suppose 11:00 on a Sunday morning is one of the quieter times for that area.) We hit up the M & M store -- one of my very favorite stops in the city!! Next was Central Park, where they enjoyed the carousel, then took a little walk around. Then we got lunch and met my friends for lunch in the park. Two of Ellen's friends from the Netherlands were here, too. So there were ten of us at lunch! Next was the most insane subway ride I've ever experienced (we had to get to Battery Park to catch the ferry to the Statue of Liberty). Seriously. If the subway was like this all of the time, I don't think anyone would ever use it. I'll give you a little rundown (if I can remember it all).

1. We exited the park on 72nd St and took the B (orange) train.
2. At 59th St. (Columbus Circle), we switched to the 2 (red) train, which should've brought us to South Ferry (right in Battery Park). But there was construction going on. So the furthest downtown it went was 14th St.
3. At 14th St. we walked a few blocks (underground) to the L train, which took us to Union Square (14th St.).
4. At Union Square we boarded the 6 (green) train, which should've taken us to Bowling Green (basically Battery Park). But because of construction, it stopped at the Brooklyn Bridge.
By this time, we had been underground for over an hour. (It should've been a quick 20 minute ride.) So we decided to take a taxi the rest of the way. Well, with 6 people (Tamara and Sarah were with us, too), this might've taken quite awhile. But the first taxi we saw was a van... whew! So he took us right to Battery Park. FINALLY!

So we got on the ferry (amidst some spinkles) and went to the Statue and Ellis Island. When we got back to the mainland, we speed-walked up ~6 blocks to Ground Zero, where we realized we had to be back to catch their bus in about an hour (which would usually be fine, but after the ordeal we had earlier, we didn't want to count on anything. Luckily this subway problem with the construction was only for downtown-bound trains. We got on our uptown train and made it back to Times Square in about 15 minutes.

I think they had a lot of fun... I apologized profusely for the underground nightmare, but they didn't seem to mind (they didn't know how else it could be, since it was their first NYC Subway ride).