Hardy Party!: Your Own Personal Tour!

Well, I won't blame a single soul if no one reads this post as it is full of all those scenery pictures one seems to take on every vacation and then never look at again! So, this is my attempt at looking at them more than once! Pictured above is almost our whole group, minus sponsors and directors, at the fountain in Central Park. Our first morning there (Tuesday) was our private bus tour. Our tour guide, Julie, was wonderful...I mean really wonderful. She was quirky and genuine. Here are a few, I swear, of my favorite images from the tour! Remember that most of these were taken from the inside of a bus, so no cracks on the photo quality!

These signs, and other like them, were sponsored by Mt. Sinai Hospital...too funny!

Yeah, right!

Central Park...I could have posted 3,000 of these, either from this trip or one of the other two times I've been! Good grief...

Jared and I were able to be in New York with our college choir in April before the World Trade Center attacks in September of 2001. Like of us I suspect, I am still very in awe at the events of that day. It really does seem so surreal at times when you aren't there all of the time. When we were in New York on our last trip (2005) we visited this church located directly across the street from the WTC site. If you don't know the story, there was not a single pane of glass broken in the church while the skyscrapers surrounding the WTC were damaged beyond salvage. It stands as an amazing testament and was used as a headquarters of sorts during the days and weeks following the attacks. It really is an amazing place to visit. The pictures above, though, are part of the story that touched my heart the most. In case you cannot read the inscription, here is what it says:

"As firefighters change from their "civvies" into their gear, they hang their civilian boots on the spikes of Trinity Church. Boots unclaimed at the end of the day belong to firefighters who lost their lives in the World Trade Center. Their boots became a memorial."

They believe that the church was unharmed because of the huge sycamore tree that stood on the property, at the end of the small cemetery on the site, in between the church and the WTC. That tree was so huge and grounded that it withstood the blow of the tons of debris that rained down and blew toward the church. Here are pictures of the roots of that tree that have been set up as a memorial.