We'll Be Home For Christmas

Wednesday was our final day in New York City. We really only had a few hours before we needed to head to the airport. We went back and forth a lot about what we wanted to do. It has been such a great trip that we had already accomplished everything we wanted to during this trip. We grabbed one more great breakfast in the city. Once again we went to a deli and had omelets and potatoes and toast. This is our favorite breakfast in NYC.

We decided to head uptown to visit Grant’s tomb. I visited this site back in 2014, but that particular day Alison was working on Stanton Island and could not come with me. It is kind of a pain to get to the tomb because the express subway line does not get you very close so you have to take a local train up past Central Park. We got off at the Columbia University stop and decided to make a quick detour to see the campus. It is a really beautiful campus. Columbia University was named King’s College until the revolution. After the revolutionary war, it was renamed. Both Hamilton and his son Phillip graduated from Kings College.

We walked from Columbia over to the Hudson river. Grant’s tomb is located right next to the Hudson. Grant’s tomb is huge. It is actually the largest mausoleum in North America. For some reason, they are only open every other hour during the day, so it was closed between 11:00 and 12:00. We had about 15 minutes until 12 so we wandered over to the visitors center. We met a couple of park rangers who were very excited to see us. They told us they had a video presentation about Grant and wanted to know if we would watch it. We willingly agreed. It was an interesting presentation. One thing we learned was that Grant was a strong advocate of Civil Rights. He fought hard for them during his presidency, but the gains that were made were erased when he was no longer in office.

We wandered back to the mausoleum and walked through this ornate and stately building. We saw the giant red granite caskets that hold the remains of President Grant and his wife. The caskets are flanked by busts of each of Grant’s Civil War generals. It is a really interesting tomb.

While we were at the visitors center we noticed a brochure for another area run by the National Park Service – Hamilton Grange. This is the house Hamilton built and lived in near the end of his life. It was relatively close so we got an Uber and headed that way. This was another interesting stop. Inside the house, there is an exhibit all about the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton. They hit most of the significant points, but glaringly leave out the Reynolds pamphlet. This made me think about the tendency to omit uncomfortable or unflattering moments in history. We wandered upstairs and saw rooms where the Hamiltons would have entertained guests and spent time as a family. In these rooms, there was original furniture and even a very old piano that originally belonged to the Hamiltons. There was a very nice lady who was excited to tell us about the history of the house. When she heard that I had read Ron Chernow’s biography about Hamilton she could not wait to point out a replica they have of a silver wine cooler George Washington gave to Hamilton as a gift. We listened intently to her story. We enjoyed how passionate she was about history.

We finished exploring the Grange and made our way to Levain bakery for a couple last cookies before we left New York. These cookies are seriously so good. It is unbelievable.

After our cookies, we headed back to our hotel and caught the EWR express bus to Newark. We do not usually fly out of Newark, but it worked best for this trip so we decided to give it a try. There is no really good way to get to Newark from Manhattan. The bus took us 90 minutes and it really is only a little more than 15 miles. The nice thing about the bus is that we did not have to lug our luggage all around and it was a straight shot. We made it to the airport in plenty of time and had a very uneventful flight home. This trip was seriously our favorite birthday trip ever. It was so much fun, but we are happy to be home and ready for Christmas.