Prairie Girl in the Big, Scary World: Miranda's NYC Trip Day 4

On Miranda's first weekend, we decided to take a trip out to Coney Island. Josh and I had never been and I had wanted to go for a long time. I've always thought the whole freakshow, creepy amusement park scene was pretty great so I thought it would be fantastic. The day was a bit cloudy and cool, but probably good for a day of very fair people walking on a boardwalk on the beach. We had checked out how to get there and knew it would be the longest subway ride ever, but honestly, as long as I can site down I kinda like the subway. So, about 1:45 later we could see it from the train! yay!

There was some really cool stained glass in the raised subway terminal. Roller coasters and all things amusement park.

The "Welcome to Coney Island sign." I'm sure it wasn't always overtop of an It's Sugar candy store, but still very cool.

For anyone who doesn't know, Coney island, is said to be the home of the hot dog. Nathan's Hot Dogs to be exact. So of course, this was our first stop... I had actually had hot dog the day before at the baseball game, so I had a lobster roll and shared cheesy fries with Miranda and Josh. Still delicious.

We then headed to the boardwalk to check out the gift shops and see what else there was. Turns out, the Halloween displays had just been set up so we wandered around the Luna Park amusement park to check all that out too.

I was also not aware that the New York Aquarium is right at Coney Island on the boardwalk as well. So of course we had to check that out. Unfortunately, a large part of the aquarium was, like was so many shoreline attractions in NY and NJ, destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. It's heartbreaking really that almost 2 years later, things are still not back to normal anywhere that was hit by the storm. We did get to see some very cool fish, sting rays, otters, seals, and my favorite, penguins.

After the Aquarium, we stopped for an Italian ice. The place had seen better days, but this sign was hilarious on the pop machine.

Josh decided to try out a roller coaster, the Thunderbolt. It lasted just a few seconds, but it looked pretty intense, and he had a new hairdo after he was done.

This ride is no longer in use, but it looks like it would have been super cool in it's day, the Parachute Jump and it is pretty self explanatory. And huge.

It was getting late in the day, so we headed toward the freakshow part of town. I was pretty sad to see that it was closed for the weekend due to a film festival that was going on. The film festival would have been really cool if we had more time to sit ant watch some messed up short films, but we really didn't. So I will be going back at some point to see the freakshow for sure. We were able to at least go in and check out the gift shop and the lobby of the building that it all takes place in. Still pretty cool.

We continued with a bit more walking to see what else there was. We found a couple last cool things.

A working model of the original Coney Island. Everything moved when you put a quarter in.

A freaky clown in the game area.

This super random poster.

That was pretty much it, and it was pretty much what I thought it would be. On the way out, we saw this 9/11 memorial. Kind of a somber end to the day. Never Forget.