Schenectady to Manhattan

We slept in again this morning and ate breakfast at our hotel.  I felt like we had plenty of time to make the drive to New York City, so we took a rural highway through the Hudson River Valley.  We stopped at Kinderhook and visited the Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse and the Luykas Van Alen House.  This is where Washington Irving got his inspiration for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  We continued on Highway 9 to Red Hook where we stopped at Annabelle's Village Bake Shop.  We bought some pastries and Banana Nut Bread.  We continued driving along this highway, but I could tell that it was taking too long, so we decided not to keep going to Tarrytown.  We found our way to the Taconic State Parkway and followed that to Yonkers, and finally onto Manhattan.  The traffic going in our direction wasn't too bad.  The traffic leaving Manhattan was backed up for miles.  We found our hotel, the M Social, near Times Square, and I dropped off Wendy and Jeffrey and our luggage.  I then drove around a few blocks to the Alamo rental location and returned our car rental.  I was honked at several times as I waited for pedestrians at different blocks.  I was relieved to be finished driving, and then I walked back to our hotel.  We checked in and rested in our room for about an hour.  We walked to Times Square and visited M&M's New York before going to Rise NY.  It was a nice attraction that showcased the best of New York City and gave us the thrill of flying around the city in a flight simulator very similar to Soarin' Over California.  We spent about and hour and a half at Rise NY, and then we stopped at a pizza place for dinner.  We were confronted by an aggressive panhandler who came into the restaurant to demand money until the owners kicked him out.  The pizza was good.  Times Square had become extremely crowded, so we decided it was time to return to the hotel.  We got a hot chocolate from the bar and went to bed.