The day started out innocently enough, we drove downtown and were, literally, the only car on the highway. That should have tipped us off that perhaps, on this day before Christmas, everything might be closed.
But no, not us. We were all like, man, this is awesome!, with the kids all excited because last time we drove into the city (that would be New York City), we drove in circles for, I kid you not, 100 minutes, before finally caving and parking in a lot for $18 an hour. Oh, the memories. And the wasted gas. And the money. But I digress.
We parked (and not at a meter, I might add) and were on our merry way to find the water taxi, which sounded like so much fun, even though it was quite chilly that day.
And you know what else was missing, besides for the garbage? Homeless people. There weren't any. I saw one guy and I naturally assumed he was homeless because we were in a park and we were downtown and also cause you can't take the New York out of the girl, but he wasn't. He was just doing yoga on the grass, with his backpack and stuff next to him. Just-a-nutty-crunchy-downtown-yoga-kinda-guy. You gotta love that.
Although, you know what? Now that I'm looking at this picture, the water taxi kind of looks like a floating version of the Electric Mayhem Bus. Frightening? Comforting? Maybe Dr. Teeth is there captain of the boat? Do you really not get the reference? Okay, I'll make it easy for you. Click here.
And I'm also okay with the fact that my being happy that my boys and husband were wearing baseball caps over their kippahs also makes me a not wonderful person. But - and this is something that Josh and I vehemently disagree on - having grown up a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I do not believe in the need to flaunt any outward appearances of Judaism, ever, while my husband feels like there is nowhere he would, could or should ever go that might make him feel like taking his kippah off and putting it in his pocket would be a good idea. He's the grandchild of Americans. Huge (huge) difference.
As we exited the skyway, and I pointed out to my children where they should never ever stand, should they ever find themselves riding the skyway again.
Here:
And on to our last stop on transportation day: the trolley. We never made it there. Apparently it's like the train in Staten Island. It doesn't go anywhere you want to go. And the only place we wanted to go was home, to watch a movie and eat popcorn. We tire easily and we get cranky quickly; we're not one of those families that goes out for the day - we like going for a morning, maybe an afternoon. Perhaps a nice lunch, but that's about it for us. But we will return to the Water Taxi. We must. Cause it looks kinda awesome in a rickety old and painted Muppet bus kind of way.
:)
Jen