NYC part I

We got on the road Saturday morning at 8:10 which was only 10 minutes later than we planned. I was pretty proud of that. I was worried about the level of whininess for the trip as they were driving me crazy before we even pulled out of the driveway. They were just hungry though so I kept passing cereal back to them until they stopped asking for more. We punched our destination address into the GPS unit we borrowed from Chris’s brother. There were two different options with different zip codes. It really never crossed our minds that we should confirm the zip code we really wanted so Chris picked one and it calculated a route that we followed. We didn’t see a map though. That would have tipped us off of our impending hassle. It said we’d be there at 12:10. We thought that was reasonable. About 30 minutes into the trip, Jackson fell asleep. Madison was content to look at a book and out the window. At 10 we stopped at a rest stop which woke up Jackson. Once we were back on the road Madison fell asleep and Jackson was content to read a book. We made our way past Hartford and Stamford and then soon came upon New York City. We could see it off to our right as we continued to drive south.  We knew that Wall Street was at the southern tip of Manhattan so we figured we’d continue on the highway we were on until we got closer to the southern part then take the Brooklyn Bridge. Eventually we passed the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery Tunnel (the two most southern ways to get onto Manhattan). Then we were driving by the Statue of Liberty and further and further south. Our route took us over the Verrazano Bridge onto Staten Island ($10 toll).  At that point we were getting suspicious of the directions. The unit was telling us that we’d be at our destination in 12 mintues which just didn’t seem possible. Since we had no idea where we were we figured it was going to get us onto Manhattan from the west side so we continued to trust the GPS. Then we were driving through residential neighborhoods when the GPS told us to turn onto Wall Street. Sure enough, there was Wall Street…just not the right one. I called my cousin at that point and asked him what his zip code was which was obviously NOT the one we chose. So we punched in the RIGHT address and were back on the road back over the bridge and eventually to the Battery Tunnel.  We figured we’d follow the directions right to my cousin’s apartment so we could drop off all of our stuff then go park the car. So we followed the directions. Only problem is that GPS doesn’t know that most of the roads are just closed around there with the WTC site and security around the stock exchange building. So I call my cousin when we came across a road block right near his place. That’s when he told us that the roads were closed. Thanks for the heads up, Cuz!
We decided to just go ahead and try to find parking but by then Jackson had had ENOUGH of being strapped in a car seat and was screaming. I really was pleasently surprised how well the kids did being in their seats for 5 hours! We planned on driving around to find street parking but our nerves got the best of us and we just pulled in a garage. We were able to pile all of our stuff into/onto the stroller except one big bag that I rolled while Chris pushed the stroller. A few blocks later we finally made it to our destination…at 1:10.