Day 2 of our trip to New York City (❄️ 2022)

The day you've been waiting for is here: my experience on Day 2 of our winter 2022 trip to New York City. After a rather quiet day yesterday, things spiced up in (almost) all the right ways today. It was a very busy day, and this is what happened.

After being home until about 1pm, around 1pm, it was finally time to leave home and check out the city, which I was looking forward to, because I LOVE outings. We left Yonkers around 1pm-ish, and we then drove to the city. We arrived around 2pm and we parked at Dock on 39th Street, for our journey to begin. After parking, we began to walk around the city, looking for the New York Public Library, to pick someone (NOT a book) up there and take pictures in front of the library. Before I keep going though, there was another reason why today was great: the weather. Usually in the winter, the weather is a bit of a pain, but today worked out, and that's actually why we chose to go to New York today. 4 words: 53. DEGREES. IN. FEBRUARY. And it was also sunny, so this was a PERFECT February day to walk around the city! Back to the library, now. That was really fun (and we ALL thought of a reference from The Day After Tomorrow, a 2000s sci-fi movie, where NYC was flooding, and everyone was running into that library, which began to flood as NYC began to go underwater under more than 10x TORRENTIAL downpours and a wall of water headed straight for the library... You should watch it, no spoilers here) and afterwards, we decided to go towards Times Square to the 42nd Street metro station to take the subway down to 14th Street to explore Chelsea Market, an massive indoor food court, basically Union Square in Washington DC. By this point, what I expected to happen up to 1-2 weeks before the official trip happened. The NYC indoor vaccine mandate. I would be fine, because I am fully vaccinated (despite not yet having a booster), but some of our other members, whom I will not say for privacy and HIPPA concerns, well... Yeah. Dozens and dozens of those blue signs saying "New York City requires you to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter this business", seeing hundreds of people in ONE building, and that fact that almost nowhere had anything gluten free to eat for me, just started to stress me out! Thank god I found a place for me to eat, and I ordered what I would normally get at 110 Grill (see my numerous posts on that, search 110 Grill on my blog) but it turned out to be wrong in the end! Damnit, New York! I wanted sweet potato fries, but I got regular. Asked for a plain cheeseburger, got one with stuff on it. Next time I'm using Find Me Gluten Free to find a place that actually HAS stuff gluten free in New York and one that makes it RIGHT! These fucking masks make it harder too! Besides that, afterwards, we then ate outside in a (somewhat) heated tent as the temperature began to drop, although it was still about 50°F outside around 4:30pm. We attempted to make escape room plans, but by this time, it was too late as reservations were needed, and it just wasn't going to work out. By 5pm, we walked through the remainder of New York towards the piers, and we ended up in a coffee shop for a bathroom stop for my little brother. (He stops about every hour or so, sometimes faster) By 5:20pm, as sunset was 5:40pm-ish and that we were still in the covered by tall buildings of New York section, we were getting dangerously close to missing the sunset on the water as the sun was setting by now. As we were very close to the water, I started speedwalking towards the street as it was 5:25pm by this time, and I told everyone we needed to HURRY if we wanted to see the sunset on the water as I wanted to. Despite having to speedwalk/run and having to deal with a red lighted crosswalk, WE MADE IT JUST IN TIME to see the last rays of the day around 5:30pm. Boy, was it PRETTY! I even joked about "God having amazing shaders in this game", and my little brother got out his tablet just in time to take pictures as we all did while my foster dad was testing out video filters on Instagram at this time, none of which he actually posted. We watched the sunset at Pier 66, which was REALLY beautiful! After the sun set, we attempted to go to the Vessel in Hudson Yards only to realize it was too expensive, so we went in the mall in front of the Vessel instead. (The reality is that the Vessel has been closed since July 2021 as a safety hazard, and may never be reopened, but currently marked as "temporarily closed". The reason why is because a small fraction of people have decided to jump off the top of the 16-story building and kill themselves, 3 deaths in which have occurred in this short-lived structure, which first opened in 2019 as a tourist attraction. After the first 2 deaths in January 2021, the attraction was closed indefinitely, before reopening in May 2021, only to be closed AGAIN indefinitely on July 29, 2021 after a THIRD intentional death happened at this structure, with the owner stating it may never be reopened. Too bad, it looked like a really nice structure, outside and inside. But besides the deaths, this was somewhat controversial, as there was a specific photo policy at the structure stating that the photos belonged to NYC and not you, even if you took them.) After this mild disappointment (which didn't affect me), we went into the mall at Hudson Yards, which was filled with MANY luxury stores I've never HEARD of before. This mall was rather similar to the Holyoke Mall back home, but with 5 FLOORS rather than the 3 at the Holyoke Mall (2 excluding the basement), and no basement. After searching the mall for the ice cream parlor we wanted, we found it after about 15-20 minutes of searching. I got one scoop of chocolate ice cream, but despite the NYC vaccination requirements, we were not asked for proof of vaccination to eat inside! I wasn't happy about breaking the rules, but sometimes, rules get broken. And the ice cream tasted REALLY good. Afterwards, we attempted to go to The Edge in Hudson Yards (a really SCARY attraction where you are taken 100 FLOORS UP and you stand on a GLASS platform that you can look down from, DON'T, unless you REALLY want to) but the floor was locked on the elevator, so we had no way to get there! Afterwards, we left the mall and walked to