Thanksgiving in New York

Steve and I took a trip to New York City for Thanksgiving. (Thanks Alison and Curtis parents for watching Blackjack!). We spent a week there, staying with our awesome friends Sabrina and Jose. They have an apartment in Manhattan with an amazing view, it was so great! I don't know who's going to read all this as it's going to be long, but I'm posting it more for our own memories than anything. Blogging is my only journaling!

View from their 20th floor apartment.


View from the rooftop terrace.

Tuesday morning, we got up early and made our way to the NBC studio audience for Who Wants to be a Millionaire with Meredith Vieira. It was fun to be in the audience, this time without the pressure of having Steve as a contestant! And Meredith is SO much nicer than Regis, I love her.

After the show we booked it over to Rockefeller Center where we had tickets to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The guests were Claire Danes and Chad Ochocinco. Not a huge fan of either really but Jimmy Fallon was really fun to watch. Being an audience member is so interesting, you get to see some of the behind-the-scenes and all the work that goes into producing a show, it's really neat.

The famous Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. They didn't light the tree until the next week so we just got to see it with all the scaffolding. It's huge!

Wednesday morning we were out the door long before the sun came up to make it to Good Morning America. Steve surprsed me once for my birthday a few years back and took me to New York and we were in the GMA audience which was so fun! This time the guests on the show were the final three couples from Dancing with the Stars (Donny Osmond, Mya, and Kelly Osbourne). We don't watch the show so it wasn't a big deal to us, but we happened to be one of a handful of people they pulled to the sidelines of the "red carpet" where the finalists ran in. The woman next to us kept asking us to shield her from the cameras. Apparently she'd called in sick to work and was worried she'd be on national television. And she was, haha, too funny!



We didn't stay for the taping, I was bored and mad that both Robin Roberts (my favorite anchor) and Diane Sawyer were out of town. I got to meet Diane last time but Robin was out of town that time too, sad. Chris Cuomo just doesn't do it for me.

Then it was off to do the . . .
. . . Sex and the City bus tour! I know, I know, you're all thinking I'm such an idiot. But seriously, the tour gets great reviews and I just had to see what it was all about. Not only was it way fun and entertaining, but it was a perfect basic overview tour of NYC. Steve even enjoyed himself, as much as he and the other husbands and boyfriends dragged along tried to pretend they didn't ; ) How could they not when they're on a bus full of hot women?!

That night we went to dinner at this really great French restaurant and saw the broadway musical "In the Heights" with Sabrina and Jose. I hadn't heard of it previously but it was really quite entertaining.

After the show at Times Square.


Awesome picture of 30 Rockefeller Center disappearing into the fog.

Thursday morning was the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade of course. We didn't feel like getting up early to stake out a good spot so we just meandered over and stood at the back of the crowd for a while. The balloons really are gigantic!

Sabrina and Jose enjoying the parade.

Then it was back home to start cooking Thanksgiving dinner. And by "cooking" I mean taking the plastic wrap off our pre-ordered feast and heating everything up in the oven. Such hard work :) It was delicious! Then the obligatory Thanksgiving nap and Christmas movies.

Black Friday we joined the crowd at Macy's to take advantage of some good shopping. Yes, it was really THAT crowded on the main level!

Saturday we met up with my sister Becca and her husband Jay. We tried out a couple fun food hot spots, including Magnolia Bakery. They are best known for their cupcakes, but better than their cupcakes is their banana cream pudding! Oh wow, we made a second trip to Magnolia's just for the banana pudding it was that good.

Me and Becca at Magnolia's.


The good thing about vacationing with others is we had someone to take our picture and document we were both at the same place at the same time.

On the subway.

We stopped by Dylan's Candy Bar to check out the candy displays.

The snozberries taste like snozberries!

That night we went to the holiday Cirque du Soleil production of Wintuk at Madison Square Garden. It was cute, very family-friendly.

But then we saw these big posters outside the stadium . . . Nadia Comaneci! How could Beck and I NOT get our picture in front of that?!

Me with my "Perfect 10."

Sunday morning, after brunch we headed to Central Park. It was the first completely sunny day with not a cloud in the sky, beautiful!




Sabrina and Jose also got us in for free at the Museum of Modern Art. Interesting, but I just am not into the artsy museums. I guess most of the time I just don't "get" it.

For instance, this is supposed to be some kind of chair. ???

Monday we had tickets to go up to the crown of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was the only really bad weather day of course. Rainy, drizzly, windy, and COLD. On a ferry, fun stuff. But we hiked up the Statue of Liberty which was really neat, especially getting to look up into the body of the statue from inside, so cool. Then we headed over to Ellis Island. They have some really great displays set up there, very ineresting statistics and information that's been gathered over the years. I could have spent more time in there but we were in a hurry.



Ellis Island


Steve told me to stand in front of this picture . . . of what he thinks I should do all day every day. No honey, I blog all day, not wash floors!

We raced from the Ellis Island ferry back to the subway, grabbed a slice of NY style pizza and ran to catch the New York Public Library tour. We couldn't hear the little old man from our spot in the back of the crowd so we broke out on our own. What a beautiful building! I wish we had more pictures.

The main lobby entrance of the library.


One of the intricate ceilings.

We wandered the city a while in the rain, running in and out of Starbucks locations and trying to find shelter. We ended up at the "Charmin - Enjoy the Go" restrooms in Times Square. So fun! Normally there is a huge line, but that rainy afternoon there were just a few of us. Charmin pulls out all the stops for this "experience" each year and it's very cool. They set up 20 private restrooms, each with 6 different types of Charmin toilet paper, an iPod or TV, and someone comes around and cleans each restroom between EVERY person! How cool! I still put tp on the seat before going, can't get over that habit. Anyway, so while you stand in line to "go," the MC guy is up front entertaining all of us as we wait. It was hilarious, he goes around asking people on the mic if they plan to go #1 or #2. Then he tells the men we'll know if they went #2 because their coats will be off. It was too funny! Such a normal thing to do, and yet when confronted about it in public people get so weirded out. I thought it was great.




Can't spare a square.

When we left Charmin we saw the Broadway discount tickets booth and decided to go see another show spur of the moment. We found cheap tickets to a comedy off-broadway show called "Newsical." It was in this tiny little theatre, very cozy. And it was pretty funny, singing and a little dancing, but mostly comedy sketches on recent political and entertainment issues. Before the show we had dinner at this cute little restaurant called Sweet Emily's. Yum!

Tuesday morning we got up and wandered the city, hitting the last of the hot spots we wanted to see before heading back to the airport.

Helpful tip for future NYC visitors: Many of the subway stations do not have escalators or elevators for your luggage. In fact, even if a station does have one, there is no guarantee it will be working! We got a good workout dragging our huge suitcases up and down flights of stairs through the subway system. But it was all so worth it.

We ate at tons of great places, saw lots of interesting sites, walked miles and miles through the city, and came away with many wonderful memories of our Thanksgiving in New York City. Thanks Sabrina and Jose!