Birthday Vacation Day 4 (Friday)

We had been hearing of this bomb cyclone that’s coming our way along the eastern seaboard. The storm was scheduled to hit around 7pm Friday night. We had dinner and plans to see the Freedom Tower and the 9/11 Museum. 

We’ve been lucky with sunny weather thus far so we really couldn’t complain too much. 

The weather starting to turn. 

Steve made reservations for us at The Meatball Shop for noon so we headed to Hell's Kitchen around 11:30. 

We stopped for a coffee first. 

The restaurant is in Hell’s Kitchen like I said and the atmosphere was totally different. 

We kept seeing these little Smart Cars that are police traffic/parking cars. They are so ridiculous. Imagine being the cop assigned to that car. lol. 

Sunny skies are gone

We didn't know we'd be passing by the Late Show! What a nice surprise. 

Ta-da! I've been waiting for this. 

We started out with some mozzarella balls.

Balls and Sauce. lol.

PEOPLE. Classic meatballs with marinara and spaghetti. SO GOOD. 

Side of risotto, because...why not?

Felt about right

The restaurant was super cute and cozy. There weren’t any people there so we didn’t actually need a reservation but ya never know. We each got classic meatballs and then a variation on pasta. I got traditional spaghetti with marinara and Steve got rigatoni and spicy meat sauce. 

And we shared a side of risotto. 

It. Was. Amazing.

I don’t usually each pasta because of my wheat allergy and it’s one of the things I miss the most. It was glorious. 

After a delicious and relaxing lunch we walked for a bit through HK before hailing a taxi back to Times Square. 

We popped into a few shops along the way and ended up back at our hotel. It was during this time Steve got a voicemail saying that due to weather, they were closing the restaurant at the Freedom Tower and there was zero visibility (which wasn't surprising). Damn storm.

We decided to change and head down to the financial district anyway since we weren’t sure if we could get refunds on our tickets. Neither of us had been down to this area since before the 9/11 attacks so we wanted to make it down there. 

It was very humbling to walk towards the North and South Pools, where the Towers once stood. We paid our respects and then headed to the Freedom Tower just to check it out.

We opted to go up anyway since we were there.

I can imagine the breathtaking views on a clear day. We will need to make it back to experience the real thing. 

Lady Liberty - standing tall

Afterwards we went across to the 9/11 Museum. 

It was incredible to see and hear everything in the museum.

I got choked up when we went by these stairs.

Created by Orange County Choppers

We spent about an hour and 20 minutes there and didn’t get a chance to see the North Tower excavation section but the museum closed at 5 and they made sure to remind all the visitors frequently. 

It was a somber walk through, but a great experience at the same time. Having lived through it and knowing exactly what I was doing and who I was with...it seemed like yesterday.

Once we left the museum, the weather was really starting to turn. We took a taxi back to our hotel so we could get ourselves ready to depart the following day. With the impending storm, we weren't sure what we'd wake up to and what state the city would be in. 

We planned to just eat our leftovers from the Meatball Shop, but we realized we didn't have any utensils. So then we just opted to get Mexican delivered since...why not? Last night in NYC and having food deliveries so convenient. We ordered, it arrived less than 20 minutes later and we called it a night.

Time to head back to reality tomorrow.