January 15th, NY and finally home!

We wake up to a blizzard outside! Not enough snow to delay or cancel our flight though. It is very fine snow that isn't sticking very well. Our flight isn't until 6pm today so we happily sleep in and lay around most of the day. We take advantage of the complimentary continental breakfast too. I really don't want to go outside but Matt makes me. So I bundle up the best I can. We went to this fabulous place that Starla Stroh recommended called The Cookshop for lunch. An organic restaurant, with great new age food.It was amazing! I'm definitely keeping this place in mind for when we visit again. While we have more time we tell Alex so show up places we haven't seen yet. So he takes us to the East side. We go through the projects which looks nothing like I imagined. You couldn't even really tell it was the projects. The area where all the poor people live is brick apartment after brick apartment, for a couple miles. Alex said they only pay $300 a month for this tiny little place. He took us by Julia Roberts townhouse. He took us to an area called Williamsburg, the Jewish community. It was like a different world! Every single person on the street was either a man with a black hat on, long curly sideburns, and a long black coat or a woman with a towel looking thing on her head. Alex said most of the Jewish woman are bald, and wear wigs or a towel to keep their head warm. Some strange hasidic jew thing? I was taking pictures of them, Alex is from Egypt and he was getting scared that I was taking photos of them. Egypt and Israel have been fighting forever and if someone saw they would probably get really pissed off. We drove around some more and decided to head back to the hotel to pack. The second we got in our room Alex called saying all of the airports in New York were shut down because a plane crashed. My heart jumped into my throat. Could this be another terrorist attack, while we are in NY?? We turned on the news and first thing we saw was a plane in the middle of the Hudson River, it had crashed just moments after taking off. We eventually found out that a flock of birds had flown into both of the engines and made the plane go down. The news said the way the pilot landed in the water saved everyone on the plane. No one had been killed! This happened at La Guardia airport, we were leaving from Newark so our flight was on schedule, but the accident had called every ambulance, fire truck, and cop on the scene so the traffic was horrible and we were afraid we wouldn't make our flight. It was quite an experience to be in, I could only imagine how crazy NY must have been during 9/11. We get to the airport an hour early so we can just relax. I bought a cute little shot glass with the New York landscape on it. We get home around 10pm and the first thing I do is run to Knox. He is so happy to see us! I'm so happy to be home. This trip was probably one of the most amazing trips I have been on. I got to see so much and experience so much. Matt and I even made some lifetime friends. I couldn't have asked for a better vacation. I love traveling with Matt, he is my best friend and the love of my life. Together we get ourselves into some crazy and fun adventures. I can't wait for our next big adventure, but for now this one takes the cake!