So way back in August (I know, I'm behind) my sister and brother-in-law, Jenn and Scott, took a month-long vacation to New York City. They love it there and had been planning this trip for a couple years. They asked Ben and I to visit them where they were staying in Manhattan in Greenwich Village, but Ben couldn't get off work and I just assumed since Ben wasn't going, I wouldn't go. Well, my sister-in-law, Lindsay, thought of a brilliant idea. She lives in Baltimore, and the Megabus (a big double decker bus) goes from Baltimore to New York City for really cheap. She offered for me to fly to Baltimore and then for the 2 of us to take the Megabus to NY together. This worked out perfectly! I flew to Baltimore after work on Thursday; Friday morning we took the 3 hour bus ride to NY; Lindsay could only stay a day and went home Saturday around noon; I took the bus back to Baltimore on Sunday night; and I flew home from Baltimore Monday night.
So without further ado, some pictures and highlights of the trip:
Day 1:
- Ride the Megabus onto Manhattan by driving through the Lincoln Tunnel (always makes me think of the movie Elf- "I traveled through the 7 levels of the candy cane forest, past the sea of swirly-twirly gumdrops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel")
- Picture by the Flat Iron building
- Lunch at Shake Shack (great burgers and shakes and sometimes an hour long wait for this place!)
- Ferry over to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty
- Memorial from 911 (basically a giant piece of wreckage from a sculpture that they put back up as its own statue)
- Walked through St. Patrick Cathedral
- Walked down Wall Street
- Saw Trump Building (didn't go in though...just one of the several Trump buildings in NYC)
- Picture outside of New York Stock Exchange
- Saw the giant bull statue in the financial district...come on bull market!
- Saw ground zero and the new construction there
- Shopping trip at Century 21- great deals on great brands!
- Walked through Chelsea Market, an indoor market with cute little places to eat and markets and where the Food Network is located (but on the upper floors, so sadly we didn't see any Food Network stars)
- FAB-U-LOUS dinner at an Italian place called L'Artusi where I had gnocchi (along with like 10 other things we all tried! the portions were small), our waiter used to live in Jeffersonville right across the bridge from Louisville, and I ate something called sweetbreads (aka fried veal glands!!!!)
- Broadway show after dinner- Mary Poppins (Lindsay had never even seen the movie!!)
- Times Square (wow- it looks like daylight there even when it's midnight!)
- Jazz bar after the show for some great jazz music and a very passionate bongo drummer!
Day 2:
- Brunch at Cafe Cluny (SO DELICIOUS!) on the street where Jenn and Scott lived
- Say goodbye to Lindsay at the bus stop :(
- Walked through the NY post office, which was humong-o
- Walked into the Empire State Building but decided not to pay the money and wait in the long line to go up it (and also felt like I was in the movie "Sleepless in Seattle" since that's the movie I really associate it with)
- Saw the famous Macy's...it was an entire city block--HUGE!!
- Walked down 5th Avenue (saw Sax Fifth Avenue) and 34th Street (where the miracle occurred :))
- Walked inside the beautiful Waldorf Astoria hotel
- Went to Rockefeller Center
- Went into NBC Studios and the gift shop, where I bought Ben a bobble head of Dwight Shrute
- Walked through Trump Tower
- Went into FAO Schwarz where my dream of playing chopsticks on the Tom Hanks "Big" piano was squashed the moment we got up to it and there was a huge line and a million kids crawling and playing all over it (as if I would wait in line to get on there with 10 other people at once...poo)
- Saw the entrance to the Apple store (sort of looks like the entrance to the Louvre or something with a huge glass structure and then you enter and go below ground)
- Walked through Central Park (not the whole thing of course--it is too enormous!) and felt like I was in a movie because I've seen it so much in movies
Went to the Boathouse on the lake in Central Park where they eat lunch in the movie "When Harry Met Sally"- Walked down the cute little NY neighborhoods that looked like something out of the movie "You've Got Mail"
- Ate at Patsy's Pizza....yum-o!
- Went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the MET) and saw the tomb where there is also a scene from "When Harry Met Sally" (OK, so basically the whole trip to me felt like a Meg Ryan movie...it was awesome, what can I say?)
- Had a fantastic dinner at Morimoto, which is the restaurant of the iron chef Morimoto (go figure!)
- Ate a delicious breakfast at a place called Five Points
- Browsed an art gallery we walked by
- Walked through SoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy, and then began the pouring rain...poo!
- Decided to go to the Natural History Museum (where the movie "Night At the Museum" is based) to get somewhere out of the rain...neat place!
Dinner at the famous Carnegie Deli (next to Carnegie Hall), complete with a plate of different pickles, an egg cream to drink (which is just chocolate milk and fizzy water...apparently, a common NY drink- pretty good!), and a ginormous open-faced reuben with pastrami, sauerkraut, swiss cheese, and thousand island dressing on rye that I split with Jenn and we still didn't eat the whole thing! Honestly, this may have been the greatest thing I ate the whole trip...it just really hit the spot and was SO GOOD!
Went back to the apartment to grab my stuff...Scott walked me to the bus stop, and we stood there in the pouring rain for almost an hour waiting on the bus, which was running late. Very depressing end to the trip!
That about sums it up. Didn't see any stars, but certainly felt like one as I saw so many scenes that I've seen on TV! The trip was absolutely fabulous and I can't wait to go back with Ben someday!
***More pictures to follow in a picture gallery***
