Crazy Big Balloons and Throwing Down with the Locals

Hello Friends. While we have certainly enjoyed our little break over the holidays we are happy to be back at it. We have lots of exciting adventures planned for the New Year but before we get to that, we have to finish up our big NYC Thanksgiving trip that included crazy big balloons and throwing down with the locals!

Off to the Parade

In NYC on Thanksgiving Day. How does one not go to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?! After a late night at the Billy Joel concert the night before we figured that the kids would rather sleep in than brave the cold and we were right.

That certainly wasn’t going to stop us! Up and out of bed around 5 am we made some coffee to go and bundled up to head to see this spectacle live for the first time. With a start time of 8:30 am we knew we would need to stake our spot a couple of hours early if we wanted to be anywhere close to the front of the crowds. With an anticipated crowd of 3.5 million people we weren’t surprised at all to see a crowded subway platform.

After taking the subway from our VRBO in LIC to get to Manhattan we had to change trains in order to get to our spot on Central Park West. This is when the enormity of things hit us. As our train made its second stop about 300 plus high school cheerleaders squeezed their way onto the train on their way to march in the parade.

In Our Spot at Central Park

We managed to secure a spot at Central Park West and W 72nd Street and settled in for the two hour wait until the start of the parade. As we tend to do we made some friends and enjoyed some conversation with others who were there for the first time as well as a gentleman who has been in that spot to watch the parade for each of the last 30 years.

The time passed quickly and before we knew it the nation’s second oldest Thanksgiving Day Parade was under way. Fun fact, Macy’s Parade is tied with our hometown parade, America’s Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit. The only one that’s been around longer is Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It started four years earlier in 1920.

We won’t detail everything that we saw that day but here are a bunch of pictures of some of our favorites that passed by. I think my favorite balloon was Kung Fu Panda.

Throwing Down to Get Back Home

We decided to head back home around 10:30 am. Sometimes we like to beat the crowds and figured we could catch the rest of the parade on television. We also had a Thanksgiving dinner to prepare. Getting back to the subway was much easier said than done. We had to work our way through hundreds and hundreds of people crowded together standing shoulder to shoulder. This was no easy feat. @Runner__Dad almost got taken out by a not so friendly 80 year old grandmother who didn’t take too kindly to him trying to get by her.

The Wonderful Diner

Once we made it back to LIC, we had worked up quite an appetite. Fortunately for us as we stepped off the subway the Court Square Diner was open and bustling with activity. We managed to snag a booth to warm up with some much needed coffee and filled our bellies with a fantastic breakfast as we plotted out what the rest of the day had in store for us.

Click on the link to subscribe today so you don’t miss next week’s installment to find out how the rest of our Thanksgiving Day went. It’s free and our goal in the new year is to share our travels with as many people as we can.