Day 1: Today was our first time riding Amtrak. We took a train from Boston to NYC and it was a good trip - certainly more comfortable than flying. We arrived at Penn Station around lunchtime and met our friend Shannon. We dropped our luggage at another friend’s apartment in Union Square and walked to Eataly for lunch. Eataly is always a great meal! We walked down to the Lower East Side to visit the Tenement Museum. We did the At Home in 1911 tour and it was interesting to see the apartment and learn about the family that lived there (no photos were allowed on the tour). We were impressed that when they purchased the buildings for the museum they put ads in the paper and were actually able to find the grown children that had lived in the exact apartments. They also had a nice gift shop at the museum.

We took the subway to Grand Central and got a bite to eat at nearby Urbanspace Vanderbilt. We always like food halls because there is a variety of food and everyone can get what they want. Then it was time for our SUMMIT One Vanderbilt tickets. It had been a looong time since I’d visited an observation deck in NYC - I think maybe in 1996 I did the Empire State Building - and the newly opened SUMMIT One Vanderbilt (late 2021) was supposed to be a fun experience with great views (and it should be for the price of the tickets!). It is certainly an amped up experience then just riding an elevator to the top and strolling around an observation deck. Perhaps overly dramatic in ways, but still more of an experience.

SUMMIT One Vanderbilt is 1401 feet tall and one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan. The views are fantastic in every direction and we booked tickets so we could watch the sunset and it was beautiful. But first, we took the elevator to the first floor of the experience - Transcendence. This is a huge room covered with mirrors and floor to ceiling glass windows. It’s a little disorienting when you first step in (and if you don’t have sunglasses, use the free ones they give you because it is bright) and there is a lot to take in, but it’s a very cool effect with the views and the reflections. Next was the room Reflect with Yahoi Kusama’s installation called Clouds and Affinity, a mirrored room with round silver balloons drifting around. We took the escalator to the second floor which had Transcendence 2 - the second level of the mirrored room - and Levitation. Levitation has two glass sky boxes with glass floors - you can step in there and look down 1063 feet to the street. The final level is Apres with food and drinks and an outdoor terrace. There is also a glass elevator you can ride for an extra $20, but we decided to skip this after talking to a friend who said the views weren’t worth the extra money. Overall, it was kind of a crazy experience with all the people and the Instagram crowd, but the views were fantastic and I’m glad we did it.