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Category: NYC 2012

NYC Day 3 – Happy Anniversary!

NYC Day 3 – Happy Anniversary!

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Sunday morning Matt and I woke up and exchanged anniversary cards before heading to FAO Schwartz which was just around the corner from our hotel.  A friend suggested we check it out just because so I took her advice and off we went.  When we got there there were 2 Soldiers greeting the kids at the door.  It was pretty cute.  We opted not to have our pictures taken with them. 🙂  I have to say I pictured the store to be a little more grand.  I mean it was big but not as big as I expected.  On the first floor were tons of stuffed animals and then you walked into the candy room!  AHHHHH!  Matt found the world’s biggest bag of twizzlers.  I should say all the candy seemed giant sized.  We managed to make it through the candy section with NO candy.  Whew!

 

Next we headed upstairs.  In between the 2 escalators were huge life sized stuff animals.  EEKK!  Unfortunately I couldn’t talk Matt into a life sized horse!  BOOO!  {He’s a dream killer sometimes. ;)}  We did see the life sized piano from the movie BIG.  That was pretty cool.

After we left FAO Schwartz we headed to Central Park and looked for food on the way.  Picnic in the park baby!  We found a little deli, grabbed some lunch and headed to Central Park to eat.  We found a nice little spot in the grass under some trees and just as we sat down a baby play group pulled up.  Thankfully they were babies so they were good.  When we finished lunch we headed over to Tavern on the Green.  Super disappointed.  I remember seeing this in the movie the Out of Towners and the movie made it appear to be in the middle of the park.  In reality it is right on the edge of the park and not nearly what I thought it would be.  It used to be a super fancy restaurant but now it’s a little visitor center type building.  Thankfully they had bathrooms.

Tavern on the Green

From Central Park we found a metro station and headed towards Chinatown.  WOOO HOOO!  We might have started walking in the wrong direction when we left the metro station.  I blame Matt. I told him what street we were looking for but he choose which way we walked.  {That’s right hon I blame you!}  Once we figured this out we turned around and really headed for Chinatown.

Only pic I took in Chinatown

It seemed as though a lot of the shops were closed and Matt wasn’t sure where we needed to go in order to score a bag.  Luckily we turned down a rather busy street and were immediately approached by a lady asking if we wanted a bag.  Hell yeah we want a bag.  We followed her through the crowd to a side street.  At this point she pulls out a laminated piece of paper with hand bags.  I start asking how much certain bags are.  Her opening price wasn’t really in the budget and Matt goes you knew you needed cash.  GRRR!  I told her I didn’t have that much and was about to walk away when she made a me deal.  😀  We waited while she went to get the bag. I must say I was a little disappointed we didn’t get to go to a super secret back room but I also had my camera so standing on the street really seemed like the a smarter idea.  A few minutes later she returned with a shopping bag, I glanced at the bag and handed over my money.  Wooo hooo!  Hello Louis!  I was pretty determined to not leave NYC without a LV bag.

Now that we had a bag we walked to the Brooklyn Bridge but not before we had a Starbucks break.  As we were walking Matt made a comment about everyone having Starbucks.  Well we got to the next corner and there was a Starbucks.  I’m not gonna lie, sitting for a few minutes was great.  And sitting with an ice cold drink was even better.  Now that we’d had a little break we walked over to the Brooklyn Bridge.  By this point my feet were like please stop using us so I wasn’t super disappointed when Matt noticed the bridge was boarded and you couldn’t see out.  We found a nice spot, stopped and took our pic and headed back.  I wanted a pretty easy, early day since we had dinner reservations that night.

We got back to the hotel around 3 or 4 and napped before getting ready for dinner at Scarpetta.  Oh Scarpetta…….

~k

 

NYC – Day 2

NYC – Day 2

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Saturday Matt and I woke up around 9 and were headed to the Empire State bldg around 10.  I thought it would be pretty cool to go to the top.  As we were walking Matt decided it would be good to go by Grand Central Station on our way.  We walked a few more blocks before we finally arrived.  The inside was pretty cool.  The first thing you notice is the bright green ceiling and then the clock in the middle.  We walked down the stairs and started to wonder around.  It was really cool seeing all the train entrances.

We continued around until we got to the Market.  Matt wanted to check it out since it’s been on a few of the cooking competition shows.  I have to say I didn’t think it was extremely large but they seemed to have a pretty good selection of foods.

From Grand Central we made our way up Park Ave.  It was neat because at one spot there were brass/gold plaques in the sidewalk.  I took a couple of pics because I thought they were pretty neat.

Soon we could see the Empire State bldg in the skyline so we continue to walk that way.  A block or so from the Empire State Bldg I saw a really cool fossil and mineral store.  My dad loves stuff like this so I took a few pics just for him.

We entered the Empire State Bldg and started to make our way up.  Matt mentioned we picked a good time to come because when he went the lines were pretty long.  Thankfully it only took maybe 30 – 45 minutes to get to the top.  As you walk through they have pics and various things about the building.  My goal though, was to get to the top.  The first elevator we got in took us from floor 3 to floor 80 in about 5 mins.  It was super fast.  The next elevator that goes from floor 80 to floor 86 (where the observation deck is) had a 30 minute wait but the guide told us we could take the stairs if we wanted.  Of course a ton of people moved from the line and headed for the stairs, us included.  We got to floor 83 and the group started dragging.  I’m really glad I wasn’t the only one about to die.  Thankfully we made it to floor 86 alive. 🙂

We got to the observation deck and there was a girl who looked like she was going to pass out.  I overheard her say she hated heights.  HAHA!  I would say she probably never made it outside.  Anyway Matt and I headed for the door.  There were a ton of people gathered right there so Matt grabbed me and we kept moving.  As you went around the crowd thinned out so I grabbed a spot on the wall to take pics.  We made our way around and took pics of the city before heading back down.  But I am pretty sure we walked by a proposal.  Girl crying, kind of shaking.  It looked like a proposal to me.  Matt missed it. 🙂

By the time we were done both of us were starving.  Matt suggested we make our way back over to the Shake Shack.  We got to the park and the line appeared to be a tad shorter then the day before so we decided to wait it out.  Forty-five minutes later we finally ordered lunch, 2 shack burgers and 2 shakes.  It didn’t take too long to get our food and we found a little table to eat at.  Matt grabbed our burgers and much to our disappointment they were not really worth the wait.  Don’t get me wrong they were good but nothing spectacular.  The milk shakes were pretty good but again not really worth the wait.  Oh well.  At least we did it and now we know we won’t do it again. 😉

After lunch we headed down to the World Trade Center and Battery Park.  {Thankfully Matt said we could take the metro.}  It was awesome seeing the new towers go up.  We thought about going to see the Memorial but you needed an appointment and we didn’t feel like waiting.  They had the original site all blocked off so you couldn’t see in and the streets were also blocked so you couldn’t get too close.  I was very surprised to see cops with rifles standing on the corners.  Crazy.

We walked by Trinity Church, which was beautiful and then down Wall Street.  We didn’t see the Bull, Matt wasn’t sure where it was and well my feet really didn’t care, but we did see the stock exchange.  We stumbled across a cool little street where all the bars and restaurants had tables set up as we walked to Battery Park.

The first thing you see when you enter Battery Park is this weird structure of bamboo.  Inside the tepee structure was a garden.  Then we walked over to Castle Clinton.  I’m not really sure what exactly it was but I have pics if I want to find out. 😉  The tour boats were at the dock so we didn’t get a great view of the Statue of Liberty but you could see her out there.  I guess I never really thought about it but I kind of expected it would be taller or higher.  I’m sure it looks much more impressive if you actually go out there.

I should mention that as Matt and I were looking at the Freedom Tower from Battery Park, Matt thought it looked like King Kong at the top.  He thought maybe it was something “fun” they were doing since the tower is now the tallest in the city.  Thankfully my zoom lens revealed the real truth….it was the crane tower. 😉

As we were leaving there was a group of men playing some sort of traditional instruments.  Then as we were standing around waiting for Matt to find a bar, I found a four leaf clover!  HOLY COW!  As a kid I always tried to find them with no luck and here I am standing by some random fence in NYC and there it is.  I was tempted to try to convince Matt to jump over the rail when I noticed a little gate.  I opened the gate, picked my clover and we were on our way back to the cute street full of bars.  We stopped at the Dubliner for a drink before making our way back to the Hotel.

That night we went to a pizza place around the corner from our hotel called Pizzarte.  The food was amazing and they had some very interesting art on the walls.  I decided to ask the waiter who the artist was, Paolo Romano, and just how much the art went for, umm 4 grand.  That’s just a smidge out of my price range. 🙂  But I might have a new art project coming soon!

After dinner we walked over to Times Square.  Man was that place crazy so we just walked though.  I did manage to get some decent night pics but I think I will post all of the night pics in a separate post.

~K

NYC here we come!

NYC here we come!

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Okay it’s time to blog about this trip.  As you know this was mine and Matt’s 1 year anniversary trip. We decided to go to NYC since I had never been and we could make it a long weekend.  {I will be running out of PTO days soon if we take another long trip.}

Matt decided we needed to be up around 4:30am on Friday to make our 7:20 flight.  Ughhh!  I hate waking up early and I really thought this might be an issue but my body had other ideas.  It decided to wake up at 4.  JOY!  I rolled over and found Matt awake too so we decided to just get up and get going.  We left the house around 5:30ish and headed for the park and ride.  The park and ride is pretty awesome and cheap!  We arrived at the airport and I grabbed some breakfast before getting on the plane.

The flight from RDU to JFK was pretty quick, just over an hour.  Once we got to JFk we found a taxi and headed into the city.  Um, now let me just talk about our cab driver.  He didn’t say one word to us except to ask where we were going.  And then it was like a mad man driving.  {Granted I never actually felt like we were going to die but holy crap they are BAD drivers!}  He managed to get us to our hotel in one piece but I am pretty sure there are no rules for driving and there are certainly not any lines to follow.  But enough about our cab ride.  I will say the drive was interesting.  Not really what I expected though I’m not sure what I expected.  I felt it looked kind of run down and dirty.  Seeing the skyline as we drove in was pretty cool though.

After about an hour in the cab we finally arrived at the Chambers hotel.  The hotel was very nice and had a funky modern flare to it.  We were told our room wouldn’t be ready til noon so we left our bags and hit the street.  Now is probably a really good time to mention I completely forgot my Rainbows at home and I wore my Lucky Brand boots on the plane.  That’s right I started walking the city in boots.

Our hotel was at the corner of 5th and 56th so to our left was Harry Winston.  Across the street was Trump Tower, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and a host of other super high end places.  We walked for a little while and Matt informed me taking pics was out of the question since people would run me over.  Hmmm.  I randomly took a few pics as I could maneuver my way into a corner or out of the main walking paths.  We found a Pret A Manager and grabbed some yummy snacks and rested our feet before heading over to the Flat Iron building.  The plan was to go to the Shake Shack for lunch.

When we got to the Park where Shake Shack was the line was stupid long so we decided to wait a little while for lunch.  Around this time my feet were absolutely killing me and I told Matt it was time to find new shoes.  He found the world’s largest Macy’s about 10 blocks away so we headed there.  OMG, I have never seen such chaos in a department store before in my life and guys this was a Friday in May.  WTF?!?  Ladies shoes were on the 3rd and 4th floors so we rode the cool old wooden escalador up.  Matt ran to the bathroom while I tried to wrap my head around the chaos that was Macy’s.  I found a couple pairs of flip flops but I was so discombobulated I just grabbed a pair, quickly tried them on and went to pay.  As I was standing in line I realized I had nothing to actually use to buy shoes.  Matt had all my money.  Dammit.  I waited for him to return and finally paid for my new shoes.  They weren’t the best but by no means were they as bad as my boots.

We left Macy’s and walked around to Madison Square Garden before heading back to the park for Shake Shack.  Of course the line was still stupid long so we continued our walking.  We finally ended up at Momofuku ssam bar.  We got the steamed pork buns and they were delicious.  After lunch we started to make our way back towards the hotel.  Honestly I have no clue as to where exactly we went.  Matt decided we could take the Metro back only to realize there were no restrooms in the metro station and I was about to die.  This turned into find restroom and head back to the metro.

We got back to our hotel around 4:30 and laid down for a while.  I tried to wash the black off my feet but they are still dirty looking, almost a week later.

That night we asked the concierge where a good place to go to dinner was and he said Bistro Milano which was one block away.  Sold!  He recommended a few dishes and called to let them know we would be right over.  We were lucky to snag a table outside but as the evening went on it began to get chilly.  Being the amazing husband he is, Matt ran back to the hotel to grab my sweater.  Our food arrived and I was less then impressed with my pizza (which was recommended) but Matt’s pasta was amazing so we ended up sharing that basically.  Our waitress was HORRIBLE!  She took our order and we didn’t see her until we asked another waiter for the check.  I was seriously tempted to just leave but Matt didn’t want to go to jail on our first night. 😉  I will say her tip reflected her shitty service, so much so that we took a pic of the receipt.  I wanted to leave tip:  Learn some customer service but Matt left actual money.

So that was basically our first day in NYC.  I think we walked at least 50 miles and guys these feet are NOT made for walking. 😉

~K

I’ll post all the pics on my photography website in the next day or so.