Up, breakfast, and out the door.

Arriving at Boston South station we checked the screens (our train hadn’t been assigned a platform yet) and raided the snack stand.

While waiting for the snackers I was approached by a nice gentleman with a Boston accent and an official shirt. He inquired about our plans and suggested that he could get us onto the train before the hoi-polloi.

It sounded like a legitimate thing so when we found a place to wait I told him where to find us and in short order he grabbed us and another family, loaded our luggage on a trolly and shepherded us past the fence to our train. He found us an empty car and stowed our luggage in the overhead racks for us.
It was almost perfect, and still worth the tip, but his assumption was that we would want a ‘four seat row’ (two seats facing each other) and a regular pair of seats. Turns out the four seater left very little room for legs and the two seater was facing backwards. But we traded around a bit and survived.

It was a four hour venture with several stops along the way.
Brian and the boys got out a couple of times to take photos with station signs – confirming that the boys had actually set foot in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

On the whole it was a pleasant ride. Much of the way the view was typical east coast (trees so thick you can’t see beyond the verge), but as we moved farther south we got some better views of coastline.

We arrived at Penn Station (8th Ave and 34th St).

We had lunch on the train but found ourselves a bit peckish so we stopped in at the McDonalds across the street.

Thus fortified we schlepped our luggage from the station – past Macy’s…

…and on to our hotel just past 6th Ave on 36th St.

Of course Jen’s room was ready and ours wasn’t so we rested/cooled down a bit before venturing out to knock off some sites.

We rode the subway to Central Park where our objectives were to impress on the kids how big the park is, see Bethesda Fountain, and hike up to the castle.

At this point we were hot and tired so we decided that taking the subway back to downtown was a better idea than hoofing it.
We got off at Rockafeller Center and, in need of sustenance, had an excellent dinner at a local eatery there.
Then it was out to check out the fountain.

…and moved on to our next big objective:

Since the M&M store is in Times Square it seemed logical to get a few obligatory shots.
We had timed our day perfectly. It was just getting dark, but not too dark so we got the benefits of the overload of lights, but it wasn’t too dark to feel safe about walking home.

We were pretty footsore so we decided to Uber back to the hotel.
First we wanted to get a block or two away from the square so we could better connect with a driver.
But by the time we had walked a couple of blocks it just seemed more reasonable to walk the whole way.

Back at the hotel we checked into our room, retrieved our luggage, ironed our shirts for tomorrow’s adventure, and hit the hay.

Tomorrow is a logistical exercise in being in three places (sometimes more than once) in quick succession. Should be interesting.

Till then…
R