New York City - Midtown Manhattan

We made this trip without the kids, so we had the rare luxury of getting to sleep in the next day. We had a lazy morning, and then walked over to Midtown. We passed by Rockefeller Center, which was already crowded with people even though the big Christmas tree wasn't lit up yet and was still being decorated. We weaved through the swarms of people and went into a very important landmark - the Nintendo Store.

Both of our kids have really gotten into Nintendo this year - for Halloween their costumes were Toad and Mario riding Yoshi. So we picked up a few souvenirs for them, and then went upstairs so I could geek out at all the Legend of Zelda stuff they had available. I've spent way too much of my free time playing Zelda games (having reached 100% on Tears of the Kingdom, not to brag), so it was cool to get to see Link there. I did refrain from touching, climbing or sitting on him.



After leaving the Nintendo store (and instantly regretting not getting a plush korok), we walked over to St. Patrick's Cathedral. Construction on the church started in 1858, and was completed in 1878. It's still the largest Gothic Revival Catholic Church in North America.





And a little bit of fall color outside the church:



Across the street from the church is the statue Atlas, which was placed here in 1937. The bronze statue depicts Atlas holding up the heavens on his shoulders.



From there we walked over to Bryant Park, which was turned into a giant Winter Village. There you can ice skate and visit over 180 shops.



It was crowded and chaotic and a little overwhelming. So I tried to escape the crowd and instead visited the nearby Main Branch of the New York Public Library. The building opened in 1911 and it is massive. It's estimated that the library contains over 2.5 million volumes in its stacks.



Not all of the library is open to the public (unless you're there to do actual library stuff, like researching). But enough was open that it was cool to walk around and explore.





The library has been shown in a bunch of movies, like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Network, Regarding Henry, The Thomas Crown Affair, Maid in Manhattan and Spider-Man. It was in Ghostbusters:



And in The Day After Tomorrow, it's where they go to escape the tsunami (and subsequent freeze):



Of course, we didn't see any ghosts or waves of water that day. Just the waves of tourists heading to the Winter Village.