In September, we took the train into Midtown with plans for a nice evening out, including dinner and a show. The show didn’t happen for us, so we signed up to do a professional scavenger hunt through Urban Adventure Quest, with a little sightseeing and dinner mixed in. After arriving at NY Penn by train, we walked to 34th St and 12th Ave, in order to check out the famous High Line for the first time.
In case you’re not familiar with it, it used to be elevated train tracks in the early 20th century until being decommissioned in 1980. Instead of demolishing it, the city ended up transforming it into an elevated open space and park. I’ve heard so much about it over the years, and was always curious about it. The High Line stretches from 34th St & 12th Ave all the way down through Chelsea to Gansevoort Street. We walked all the way from 34th St to around 23rd St, and it was interesting. It was very crowded on a Saturday evening, and it’s a big open public space with benches and some sculptures sprinkled around.
After a quick break at the 23rd St Best Buy, we made our way to Times Square to start our scavenger hunt. We started out in Times Square, then dashed from the West side to the East side looking for clues. You access the Urban Adventure Quest website on your phone to read clues and answer questions. It’s best to have multiple phones so one person can read clues and input questions, and a second person to help with mapping and researching. We ran around much of Midtown from places on 8th Avenue the West Side to Park Avenue on the East Side.
[simpleviewer gallery_id=”162″]
We took a break towards the end for a sorta late dinner at Sophie’s Cuban restaurant. We also stopped by the Nintendo store at Rockefeller Center as part of the break. The kids basically ran amuck through the store for a good 30 minutes, and could have kept going, but we needed to finish our scavenger hunt and it was getting both late and dark. We finally made our way after counting arches and statues at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, to Grand Central Terminal where we completed the final puzzle. I think it was around 11 pm. Wow, it was an involved scavenger hunt.
We grabbed a cab back to NY Penn to catch our train back home. I think we got home around 1 AM.