New York, New York

For a wonderful Mother's Day and Birthday Present this year, I went to New York with a friend and one of her friends. We had a wonderful time and saw many wonderful things.

Day 1
We started out heading Downtown to see the World Trade Center Memorial. I wasn't sure would I would get out of the experience, but it really brought home the magnitude of the site and what it really took to clean-up after and how hard it was for the people who had loved ones in the WTC. I have a hard time when I lose anything, I need evidence of what happened to it. I don't know how I would have dealt with not having any idea what happened to a whole person. There was one person whose ID, car keys, and cell phone were uncovered in one of the loads of debris searched offsite. No DNA was ever found of that person.




We went to the Statue of Liberty for a tour of the island and loved learning of the history of the statue, so much so that we missed the last ferry to Ellis Island and had to go back a couple of days later. Next we hit Canal Street and a truly New York shopping experience. We met up with my brother Paul for a quick dinner and then we were off to Lion King.

We decided to buy tickets for one Broadway show before we got to New York. We decided on The Lion King. The show was amazing. I loved the costumes, stage, the actors. I was amazed at the child actors, I just can't imagine have that kind of composure to preform in front of a huge audience at such a young age. The engineer in me wanted to see how the stage worked, how Pride Rock moved out of the floor and how the different props popped out of the floor and then were swallowed back into the floor. We were exhausted at the end of the night, we had gotten up at 5am to get to our flight and never really sat down until we got to the Lion King.


Day 2
We headed out the next morning to Brooklyn to walk the bridge, get pizza and ice cream. We grabbed a quick breakfast and took the subway to Brooklyn. We shouldn't have eaten. We were headed downtown and thought we would walk the bridge and then get pizza at Grimaldi's. On the way down we decided to take the train over to Brooklyn and walk back across to Manhattan, after having eaten our way through Brooklyn. We started with Jacque Torres Chocolate, I abstained from the hot chocolate, although now I am wishing I had tried, it is supposed to be some of the best hot chocolate. We headed over to Grimaldi's to wait for it to open. People had already started lining up at 11 for the 11:30 opening. We fortunately made it in with the first wave of people. The pizza was wonderful, some of the best I had. Since we hadn't eaten enough yet we got some ice cream from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. We walked back across the bridge and saw some wonderful views.

We decided to try for another show. So we headed down to TKTS to try for some half price tickets. We got tickets to Guys and Dolls, which if you read my previous post, was a wonderful show for me. We hadn't gotten enough of Canal Street and headed back for more shopping and to meet up with Paul and his girlfriend, Stephanie in Little Italy. Paul took us to a great restaurant, La Esquina. We were still full from our tour through Brooklyn, so we just ordered to "cheesy corn." It was fabulous and I wished I had room for more. I plan on trying to replicate the corn, it was very GOOD.





We headed uptown to get ready for Guys and Dolls, by the time we sat down we were exhausted. I loved the show and we hung around like groupies to get autographs and pictures. We walked over and got a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery and ONE sandwich from Carnegie Deli for the 3 of us. We couldn't even finish half of the sandwich. We passed a food cart that was cooking up a storm and had at least 30 people lined up for food and 30-40 more sitting around eating. We had eaten so much by this point so much we didn't even consider stopping, I think we missed out on one of those secret food carts that people track using Twitter.




Day 3
We headed back to Ellis Island, if you ever make it there, plan for plenty of time. We had to drag ourselves away to get back for checkout at our hotel. It was a wonderful, I really wished we had more time there.

We got a great burger from the Hamburger Joint. You would never expect this hole in the wall hamburger joint to be hidden behind a red curtain in the 5 star Le Parker Meridien Hotel. Paul gave us a couple of tips for hidden gems, this was one of them.

We headed to 5th Ave for shopping and to walk to Central Park. We meet up with Paul and Stephanie for a tour of Central Park. He showed us the fountain from Enchanted, Strawberry Fields, some of the New York character. We had to hurry off to catch out flight home after a wonderful whirlwind trip.


After I got home Kris asked me if I had ever gotten the card he and the kids sent to New York. He had made arrangements to send a card to the hotel we were staying in and have it delivered to me there. I never got it. It was so sweet that he had the forethought call the hotel and to send it a week a head. He even sent directions to have it forwarded back home, if it didn't reach me in time. We still haven't seen it, I am sure it got lost somewhere in the hotel.

We had a wonderful time, I would really love to go back with my family. I just have to build up the nerve to take all the kids to the chaos of New York. Sorry for the long commentary, this is serving as my journal at the moment.