After leaving our bags at the hotel, we started wandering the streets of New York. One block down we came upon Macy’s holiday windows. There were so many people huddled at the windows we had to watch our turn to get to them. The windows were cute but I was expecting something more than what was there. Macy’s was celebrating the 50th anniversary of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in 3D scenes recreating six key moments from Charles Schultz’s indelible cartoon classic. The gang’s all here: angsty Charlie Brown, bossy Lucy, deceptively deep Linus, musical Schroeder, indefatigable Snoopy and more. The characters in delightful installations showed off the their moving parts, music and interactive features.

City officials had said there was no known, credible threats against New York City following the recent attacks in Paris. We felt it was probably safer than any other time to make the trip. Police officers, more than 2,500, walked the streets, stood on top of mobile command center vans and helicopters flew overhead to watch the crowds. Some rode horses while others were on motorcycles or walked with dogs. We did notice a large presence of police officers every day we were in the city. They were very friendly and helpful.  

It was a very early morning flight to New York City, we were up and out at 4:15. The van had been loaded the night before with the luggage we wouldn’t need that morning. We had a lot of luggage with us due to the length of time we would be in New York and the 12-day cruise to the Southern Caribbean. Once the sun came up it was a cloudy day. As we traveled above the clouds, they looked very strange with the sun shining on them. Steve had scheduled Airport Limo Service to pick us up at the airport. It was a very nice 45 minutes from LaGuardia Airport to Hampton Inn Manhattan 35th Street/Empire State Building hotel. Steve, Holan and I had been to New York at different time but Dee had never seen The Big Apple. It was fun seeing the city again through someone who …