Empire State Building

The Empire State Building Observatory Deck was awesome, y'all, but I can't really say the same about the lines. Though I was grateful it was the first one we'd encountered all day, it was late and every time you got to the front of a line, they moved you to another line in another room.

It was probably about 1.5 hours before we finally got to the top and, when we did, my daughter looked at me and said, "We just waited all that time to see the same thing we saw during the day at Top of the Rock?"

Why, yes, we did.

But it was beautiful. See?

I'm really so grateful to have the pics even though Tonto thought we could have bought the same pic on the street for $5 or less.

There's just something about seeing it for yourself, you know?

Once we finally made our way back to the street, Tonto tried to hail a cab. It's easier said than done at 11:30pm apparently. Eventually a nice gentleman from a car company picked us up and took us on an alternate route (due to construction) that had us both wondering for a while if we were being abducted.

Not. Kidding.

Tonto told me later he was going through all his medical training to figure out how he could incapacitate the guy long enough for us to jump out of the car.

But he wasn't taking us anywhere other than our hotel. Just via a different (ie longer) route than we'd come before. And he was a really nice guy. And, yes, I tipped him 25% since I felt guilty about assuming the worst. :-)

And then we all fell into bed and passed out from extreme exhaustion. A 12-hour sightseeing trip will do that to you.