I know, I know, this is not Facebook. What is wrong with this picture? :)

Saturday July 9.  Our family vacation of 2011, dubbed the "National Treasure Tour," started bright and early on Saturday, July 9.  Dan's lovely mom, Colleen, picked us up at our house at 5:20am.  Sheesh.  That is not my favorite time to be awake!  We all piled in the tiny Prius and headed to the DFW International Airport.


Our flight to the airport in Newark, New Jersey, was pretty uneventful and Kylie and I got to visit the on-board lavatories only once during the flight.  I think I hit the poor flight attendant with the door as I came out of there - she was sitting on a little chair back there because every seat on the flight was full.  She was not that friendly to begin with, but me banging into her with the door probably didn't help.  ;p


From Newark, we took the RailLink (commuter) train into Penn Station in Manhattan.  From there, we hailed a cab to take us the rest of the way to the Hilton Times Square.  Thank goodness we did, because we were several blocks from the hotel and dragging suitcases through the crowded city streets would have been no small feat.

We dropped our luggage with the porters, as it was too early to check in, and we grabbed lunch at John's Pizzeria on 44th Street.  The brick-oven pizza was delicious, as was the salad.  John's Pizzeria occupies an old church building and still retains the stained glass windows (http://www.johnspizzerianyc.com/index2.htm).
 

There was no shortage of folks offering tours, and we opted to buy a Gray Line Tour package.  On this night, we took the City Lights (nighttime) tour which traveled to points downtown and to Brooklyn.  This was nice, because the weather was wonderful and we got an idea of other locations in the city we might like to venture to another day.


By the time we got back to the hotel (we did register and get our room organized somewhere in there), we were exhausted and ready to catch some zzzzz's!