New York City: Day Three

5:30 am -- (yep, 5 freakin' 30 in the am) We receive our wake-up call. One that I PURPOSELY set up. Why, you say? Because we are headed to see Norah Jones this morning! For free! ABC's Good Morning, America holds a free concert in Bryant Park every Friday morning and it just so happens that one of my favorite singers will be there. Yippee! (except we have to wake up at O Dark Thirty in the morning to get there. On the busiest day of our trip. It turned out to be pretty much worth it. Even the standing in one spot for 2 hours straight(with sun in our eyes) to listen to 3 songs.



She's sooo cute!

10:00 am -- We have a reservation for the NBC tours at NBC studios at Rockefeller center. Got to see Conan O'Brien's studio and Saturday Night Live studios. No pictures were allowed so you'll have to take my word for it. It was cool to get an insider's view of how SNL is produced. On the tour with us were a large group of school-age kids. They always come up with such great questions. Here's Ron's question for the SNL portion of the tour. "What happens to all of the sets after the show?" It turns out that they have them transported in from Jersey, arriving on Wed. or Thur., and then they are painted rather quickly for the Saturday show. Afterwards they're shipped back out (hopefully recycled in some way but who knows). Another interesting tidbit: the audience during the dress rehearsal performance gets a part in deciding what skits stay and which ones get cut. If a skit gets very little positive feedback (ie: laughter), it gets cut before the live performance.




12:00 pm -- We grab lunch from a street vendor (not a hot dog or pretzel) and bring it back to the room to get prettied up for the second half of the day.

2:00 pm -- Time for one of the most anticipated activities of the trip (for me at least).



Yep, that's David Hyde Pierce in the Broadway musical, "Curtains". It was very entertaining. Of course, I'm partial to the dance numbers (I was a dancer in a local production of Oklahoma way back when). Fun plot, rousing song and dance, and excellent acting. Who could ask for more?

5:00 pm -- We make our way to the SoHo area. Quick trivia: What does SoHo stand for? ........South of Houston....Houston is pronounce How-stun named after some dude (can't remember his first name) Houston who was too pretentious to pronounce his name Hew-stun. You can thank me later for that bit of useless information. Our dinner reservation for L' Ecole (the French Culinary Institute resaurant) is not until 8 pm. We decide to just wander and see if there's anything interesting to entertain us for the next three hours. Hmmmm. After aimlessly wandering through the crowded streets, we decide to take the train over to the J&R music store to purchase a new battery for my cell phone. Even though I don't use public transportation on a daily basis, I would like to think that I'm not a complete idiot. No such luck. I've always been creeped out by revolving doors, especially the metal gate ones. So when I come up to the revolving gate door entrance to the subway, I'm hesitant. Long story, short. I get stuck on the wrong side of the gate after passing my card through the reader and it won't accept my card again for another 18 minutes. Yay! (sarcasm) Frustrated, we decide to hoof it.

Not really planning to, but because we were in the vicinity of, we visited Ground Zero. Not much to see as it is basically a huge construction area. For me, it was a moving experience just standing back and imagining what used to be. I hope the new building serves it's intended purpose.

7: 30 pm -- With a half an hour to go before our dinner reservation, my bladder is about to burst. I quickly realize that it is almost impossible to find a public restroom unless you are a patron of a restaurant. Most of the shopping establishments have no facilities. Finally, we pop into Bloomingdales and they have not just one, but three glorious restrooms - one for each floor. I'm tempted to use each of them just because I can, but I refrain myself.

8:00 pm -- Our Frenchy dinner was yummy. I'm sure the chef would not appreciate that type of review. Not ever having experienced an authentic French meal (yes, I live a sheltered life), it was nice to be in a facility where the servers spoke plain English and the menu items were listed in both English and French. Very user friendly! I won't bore everyone with the details of all five courses, but here are the highlights. Ron had this one dish with a dark, very black sauce that turned his teeth black. Of course as soon as I mentioned this fact to him, he had to display his black chompers to me with a big grin. Very flattering indeed! I had a super yummy (kudos to the chef) Asparagus cream soup. Dessert was, by far, the main event. I ordered the blueberry lemon tart that arrived with a sugar wafer thingy (again, the chef is cringing). I would have to say that although it was good and I loved the experience of having these dishes delivered to me that have such a lovely presentation it makes it extremely difficult to mess it up by taking a bite, I no longer feel the need to spend that much money on one meal. Been there, done that, moving on.

10:00 pm -- Riding the train back to our hotel there is an interesting mixture of people (more so than the usual). Directly across from us, we witnessed an obviously drunk man who had wet himself sitting next to a well dressed young woman who was oblivious to the too-close-for-comfort ickyness. I suppose it's not officially a trip to NYC until you see either A) someone urinate on themselves B) someone urinate on a friend or C) someone urinate in a parking garage due to their condition of Uromysatisys.

Thus ends a very busy day. Onto the next!

I Love Surprises!

I found this super cute, striped, hand-knitted hat waiting for me in the mailbox a few days ago.......


You'll never guess who it was from (well maybe you will)!

Thanks a bunch, Bearette!

Guess who also loves it? Yes, the same person that stole my first cute hat. But I've already informed Jesse that this is MY hat. Hands off!

Normal

The kids are home, therefore everything feels back to normal again. We had to clear a pathway to walk through the living room because Jesse's suitcase exploded about 5 minutes after entering the house.

It was neat to see how excited they both were to see us at the airport. Even Nate was visibly excited, bouncing up and down as we exchanged hugs. Having said that, they were also not ready to leave friends and family in California. Next time we'll have to consider letting them stay longer even though it's difficult for Ron and I.

******************

On a very sad, unrelated side note: Yesterday Jesse went to check our pool to see how dirty it was (we haven't cleaned it out this summer and it is literally a pond) and she found a dead (what we think is) a red-tailed hawk. Very sad. :( What once was a very beautiful bird is now a bloated, putrid carcass. Last night I finally began the cleaning the pool process that should have started months ago. As I unscrewed the drain, dead bird water sprayed all over my feet and legs. Eeewww!

Funny Thought

You know how sometimes the family and friends of comedians get ripped up one side and down the other? And they're supposed to learn to live with it because it's just "part of the act". Don't take it personally, right?

I see the same potential with blogs. Anyone agree?

New York City: Day Two

8:00 am -- We headed down to the shoreline on foot. Our plan was to get our tickets for the Circleline cruise later that evening. We weren't sure how popular the evening cruises are and wanted to make sure we didn't miss out. On the way, we saw a group of people outside the Chinese embassy doing some type of relaxation exercises. I was impressed at how focused they seemed to be. After all, they were not on a quiet mountainside or even in a park. Instead they were on a sidewalk with traffic rushing by, taxis beep beeping.

10:00 am -- We took the bus up to Central Park with plans of going to the Natural History Museum. On the way, we passed by Tavern on the Green (with me finally realizing why it's named as such). The museum is so large, we had to pick and choose which sections to view. That's fine because we plan on going back on our next trip with the kids. My only request was the dinos. It's not everyday that you get to see them you know.

Stego has always been my favorite. Isn't the baby cute?



The ginormous whale.

6:00 pm -- We take the bus back to the water and wait for the Harbor Lights cruise to start. I would highly recommend to anyone visiting the city (especially for the first time), to take one of these cruises. Even though it's totally touristy, you get some wonderful views....

and to top it all off, the star of the show....

the Statue of Liberty up close and personal!

9:00 pm -- We jump ship (well, walk calmly off the boat at the end of the cruise). We have exactly two hours to get ourselves to the Chelsea neighborhood for our evening entertainment and grab some dinner along the way. There was a lovely Szechuan restaurant where the moo shu chicken was yummy and the waitress almost gave us a free meal. By mistake, she forgot to give us our check, we practically had to beg for it, and she was extremely grateful to us for our honesty after realizing the mistake. With tummies full, we head over to wait in line with a bunch of 20-something college students at the Upright Citizen's Brigade. What is that, you say? It is a unique improv comedy show. It was well worth the $5 admission price. Both Ron and I passed on the cans of Pabst that were being purchased. Improv always seems so much more impressive and entertaining than the rehearsed "bit".

11:30 pm -- Crash on the bed in preparation for our fun-filled over scheduled Friday.

New York City: Day One

5:00 am --- We wake and get ready for our 6:30 am flight. Luckily we chose to fly out of the smaller nearby airport which takes a mere 15 minutes to drive to.

7:55 am --- Arrive at La Guardia. After fruitlessly searching for the news stand that sells the Metrocard pass, we decide to fork out an extra four bucks to ride the bus to the subway station.

10:00 am --- Since we arrive at our hotel so early we're not able to check into our room. We had already expected this, but luckily they have lockers at the back of the lobby so we could leave our bags (2 fully loaded backpacks). We head out to the Empire State building. Unfortunately we had forgotten the camera back in the locker. Even though we didn't capture it on film (or pixels), the view was spectacular. And it gave me a good frame of reference as to what was where. Even so, I was still turned around the whole time because for some reason I had it stuck in my head that Greenwich Village is north near Central Park. Oh well. It's a good thing I had a lover of maps to lead me around. :)

12:00 pm --- We head back to the hotel to check in and get our bags (but more importantly, our camera). The room is just big enough for the double sized bed and a little bit of walking space. It's pretty much what we expected. Because we had only slept about 3-4 hours the previous night, the bed sucked both of us in for the next few hours.

5:00 pm ---We woke just in time to grab some dinner at a deli along the way to the fireworks show. It was there, waiting along the East River, that I had the opportunity to stand in the LONGEST BATHROOM LINE EVER. Two stalls+thousands of people=Not fun. To give you a good frame of reference, the men's bathroom actually had a line. Which we all know NEVER happens.

9:00 pm --- After being entertained with the rise and fall of umbrellas every time it started sprinkling, Macy's put on a decent fireworks show. We were able to see the first half, while the second was hidden behind the cloud of smoke. It was still entertaining, but by no means anything close to the show we witnessed in Vancouver, WA. Of course, I don't know if we'll ever witness anything that spectacular.

Isn't it pretty? Too bad that guy's hat in the bottom right corner had to pop in there.


Don't I look thrilled?

10:30 pm --- We make the trek back to Times Square, collapse and prepare for the following day.......

I Promise

.....I'll have my NYC update ready to go sometime soon. I know you're all waiting on pins and needles. ;)

NYC here we come!

*My bag is almost packed

*Floors mopped and bathrooms cleaned

*Blister on heel of left foot

*Shopped for yet ANOTHER pair of shoes due to the fact that my lovely KangaROOS gave me a blister on Sunday

*Started knitting project at 12:00 tonight that I should have started weeks ago (and needs to be done by tomorrow....yikes!)

*Scheduled a few of our outings including buying tickets to the broadway show Curtains with David Hyde Pierce and a reservation at the French Culinary Institute restaurant, L' Ecole (this will be my first for both things)

*Hoping that I don't make an idiot out of myself at the french restaurant. I teased Ron that I would tell the waiter, "Don't bring me none o' them snails!"

*Why am I awake at this ungodly hour?