On Day 5 of our fall trip, we boarded an Amtrak train at 10:05 am in Harrisburg, PA and headed to Penn Station in NYC! This was our first time on a train. It was a 3 hour 50 minute trip, with a few stops along the way in PA and New Jersey, finally getting to NYC around 1:15 pm. These are just a few of my cell phone photos from our rail trip.

When we got to Penn Station, we had to walk about a 1/2 mile (8 blocks) to our hotel on 41st Street. Not to waste any time, we checked in, grabbed a sandwich at Schnipper's and boarded our first subway ride to Central Park. Don't laugh, but I watched plenty of YouTube videos about NYC and how to ride the subway. I went knowing how to purchase our Metro cards and how to swipe them to get through the turnstiles. I also had downloaded the MyTransit app, which allows you to put in your current location and where you are going to and it gives you the closest subway station and the correct train(s) to take. We did everything right on the first try!

We arrived at Central Park around 3 pm. Of course, I had already planned a route of where to start and what we wanted to see. It only took about 2 hours to see everything. We started at Strawberry Fields and ended at the Carousel. We even made it to Belvedere Castle. We had beautiful weather for our first day in the city and it was a lovely walk through the park. Below are some of the highlights, but there are many more pictures and selfies in the gallery. Central Park Gallery

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Continuing on by foot through the city back towards our hotel, we spent the rest of the day and night visiting places that we wanted to see and stores that we wanted to shop in. We spent a lot of time in and around Times Square, which was just 2 blocks from where our hotel was. We also timed it perfectly to watch the last 30 minutes of The Five at Fox News. Yes, I stood at the window and took pictures like a true tourist. For those of you who don't know, my daughter plays guitar, so one of the things we made sure to do was to visit the NYC Guitar Center. We were there for about an hour, so that she could get a little practice in. We also went to the Hard Rock for dinner, which turned out to be a fantastic time. Our waitress was awesome and from Orlando. Our dinner was so much better than I expected and when Kaley asked her about a certain band memorabilia, we ended up getting a private tour after dinner by the manager! He showed Kaley all of the memorabilia that she was interested in seeing, even taking us into rooms that weren't open to the public. He must have spent nearly 45 minutes with us. It was a truly special experience.

You will see some additional pictures in this gallery, which will actually be included in the next blog post, as they occurred on our 2nd day in NYC.

To see all of the photos from our city walk, please visit the gallery. NYC City & Times Square Gallery

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