Flying to New York

Hello, hello from the Big Apple (New York City's nickname)!

We left Minneapolis at 10:00 this morning - my friend Tari graciously chauffeured us to the airport. Good things happened right away, including someone walking up and handing me a voucher for free food at the airport for no apparent reason. He said, "Do you want this voucher? I've got to get on the plane right now." That was super nice as I had not had any breakfast before leaving home!

Then, I actually DID get a window seat, as you can see. I was one row ahead of the exit row, which is a good thing, also. When you sit in the exit row you have to promise to take care of opening the emergency door in case of an emergency, and I just wanted to read my book and not really worry about one more thing.

There was NOT any sort of emergency - in fact, ANOTHER good thing that happened on the way here was that there was an empty seat in my row on the airplane, so I didn't have to squeeze into my seat and excuse myself over TWO people when I needed to get up and take a quick walk down the aisle. Very lucky!

My mom and dad were already here when I arrived. They flew in from Indiana earlier in the day. I haven't taken a good picture of them yet, but I will put it up when I do. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we saw an interesting exhibit called - I'm not kidding - "Guitar Heroes." It was all about the history of the guitar, some of the famous people who have made them, and how they do that. The Met is a HUGE art museum, and we got there about an hour and half before it closed, so we only got to see a fraction of what they offer. I've been there before, but I love it!

Prior to that, I wandered through Central Park, another amazing place in New York. The people in charge of the city back in the 1860s were smart enough to save 843 acres, or 6% of New York City's total acreage, to use as a park for the people to enjoy, instead of building gigantic buildings all over the place. Central Park includes:

Central Park, New York City

• 7 different bodies of water (ponds, a reservoir, lake, etc.)
• 250 acres of lawns
• 136 acres of woodlands

And it's all right in the middle of one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world! Very smart!! (Actually, the people who designed St. Paul and Minneapolis did something like that when they built our lovely cities, too. They set aside lots of woodlands and lakes for people to enjoy FIRST, then decided where to put the buildings. Very smart!!).

Well, that's all for now. Hope you all are well.

More soon - Ms. Lucas (Sandy :-)