Manhattan Treasures (in no particular order or borough)

The photos that keep popping up on my random screen saver are from almost a year ago when we were in Manhattan for Ryan's debut at the Metropolitan Opera.  Sadly, none of them are of actually of Ryan or the Met, but with the terrible weather and hardship facing a city I love, I wanted to write about it now.

Manhattan will always be a home town for us.  Ryan and I met and married there and we have many friends who call it home year round.  Plus we are there quite often.  Some of our favorite places are in New York City.  One of our best days was last fall when the kids and I decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Have you ever from need or desire walked to Brooklyn?  Well, technically we didn't either.  We took the A train to the City Hall stop and followed the easily marked signs to the bridge pathway (with our stroller) and walked to Manhattan.  It was a beautiful view, and we didn't even let the over-zealous-bike-messengers impatient attitudes with all the tourists in the world and anyone else who happens to be directly in front of them, turn our trip sour.  We saw barges and because my children sing all the time and everywhere they go, they immediately began singing "barges, I would like to go with you, I would like to sail the ocean blue."  I should have put out my hat for tips.  We had an unobstructed view of Lady Liberty and of Staten Island and Governors Island and talked about the history of each.
Upon reaching lower Manhattan there isn't a ton of things for kids to do, other than the random neighborhood playground, so we headed up to Central park, via the subway, and played at another of our favorite spots, the 69th street playground in the park.   There are always lots of children to play with but on that day a very fat Raccoon came also.  It was huge and terrified the locals.