NYC: the longest day

We arrived in NYC at about 9:30 at night. Our plan to at least act like we knew what we were doing flew right out the window as soon as our plane landed. We had no idea how to get to our hotel. Taxi? Shuttle? Subway? We walked around in circles at the airport trying to figure out how to get outside when a nice man took pity on us and told us to go take a taxi to our hotel. So we walked outside.

Hailing a taxi shouldn't be too bad. I'd seen Phoebe do it on Friends. We found a bunch of them stopped right out front. I casually extended my arm straight out from my hip. Not to eager, but they should be paying attention, right? Nothing happened. We stood and laughed nervously for awhile and kept trying. Then the light changed and they all moved towards us. Apparently we were standing right under a traffic light that had been red. How we did not notice this I'm not sure. I think we were laughing too hard at my hailing skills. Plus, all these taxis were full. The nice man from the airport appeared and pointed down the street where we were supposed to walk. Oh! A huge line of taxies and a place to wait for them. We were off to a good start.

It got better when we got into our taxi and gave the intersection of our hotel. Our driver had no clue where it was (a theme of the trip). How were we supposed to help? We had no clue where it was either. We called the hotel, our driver called some mysterious person and spoke in whispers most of the way, and somehow we got there. We lugged all our stuff up to our room and tackled the next item on our agenda: dinner. We were starving. By now it's about 10:00pm. We made a dozen phone calls to restaurants to try and get directions. Apparently in the "city that never sleeps" the restaurants do, in fact, close. At about 10:00. We decided to just get on the subway and go somewhere and find something. We ended up in Times Square. It was exactly how we pictured New York City: lights, people, movement, crowds, etc. We walked around some and found a deli that was open and grabbed a slice of pizza. Yum! We walked around a little more and then headed back to the hotel. Afterall, we had to get up at 4:45 to get catch the Today Show!

In the morning we navigated our way to Rockefeller Center (grabbing a bagel on the way). Here we are after about 4 hours of sleep! The whole experience was awesome! They had Lee and Crystal from American Idol there and the music was amazing. We were close to the front and when we got home we saw ourselves on TV numerous times. After that we headed to Magnolia Bakery. I wish I could have bottled up the sweet smell that greets you when you walk in. Wow! So many cakes, cupcakes, and cheesecakes. I settled on a key lime cheesecake and Hillary walked out with red velvet cheesecake. We walked around some more. Notice a pattern here? We walked so much! Never have I walked so much on a vacation. Good thing I brought my workout clothes...I never once used them. We got home so late and got up so early, plus I figured with all the walking we did allllllll day that it evened out with all the food we consumed. Speaking of food: lunch. We went to Carnegie Deli. The food was ok, but the cheesecake (yes we ordered another piece! We hadn't eaten our goodies from Magnolia Bakery yet) was divine. They serve you a bowl of pickles after you sit down. Now normally I like pickles. But these....as Hillary put it, they taste sort of like grass. We checked out some old churches, went to a knitting store (Knitty City....we could get lost in all the yarn and patterns in there for hours!), and then ended up in Central Park. After all the walking we wanted to sit for awhile. We were on the East side of the park and walked about halfway across in some crazy, twisted wooded trails. They were beautiful. But we wanted to sit and we couldn't figure out how to get to the open part. Finally we found a spot.
We sat on the grass for awhile and ate our cheesecakes from Magnolia Bakery. What? We had been carrying them around all day and needed to eat them before they melted into a gooey mess. They were delicious.

Next we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the broadway show. We saw Wicked and it was out of this world. The talent of those actors and actresses was amazing. We were so glad that we went. Nothing I have seen even compares to that performance.

After the show we took the subway and walked some more to Wine30 to meet up with Ryan's cousin, Kelly, and her friend Patrick. We totally got lost on the way. We did that a lot too. We would look at the map and figure out where we needed to go and then when we got off the subway we would be all mixed up and start walking in the wrong direction. Like I said, our acting like we knew what we were doing was going very well. Plus it was about 12:30 in the morning and we had been up for almost 24 hours. We made it to Wine30 and had a wonderful time with Kelly and Patrick. I wish I had gotten some pictures with them. Maybe we were too tired to think of it, but bummer! Next time I suppose. I think we made it back to the hotel about 1:45. Needless to say we did not set the alarm clock for the next morning. We needed to catch up on some sleep. We had more walking and sightseeing ahead of us. Stay tuned!