New York City Baby!

Hellllloooo! I am going to attempt to share about our recent trip to NYC over the course of this week. My very sweet friend (who is a waaay better writer than I am (maybe that has something to do with English degrees)) has traveled a lot with her family over the past few years and I really like how she updates her blog about trips: one day at a time. So, I am going to attempt to copy Heatharlyne's idea so that I can share the bulk of the trip without bogging you down with a week long post or shorten it to something that is unsatisfying. So, here goes!

The travel from Jackson to DFW to NYC was pretty much uneventful, which is pretty much what you're going for these days in terms of air travel I think. I will say, though, that flying with American is not NEARLY as much fun as flying with Southwest. They're all together much more uptight and that sucks what little fun there is in flying anymore right out of the whole experience. One flight attendant even told all of us that we couldn't put our water bottles or--get this--any 'non-American Airlines literature' in the pockets of the seats! What the what?! Anyway, we arrived on time, got our suitcase and caught a yellow taxi all without trouble.

I should note here that my sweet husband and I had spent quite a bit of time on our itinerary. By that I mean, I made note of what I wanted to see and do, Eric researched it, located it on a map, plotted all the things on a map, then grouped these things into days of the week that we would see them, and then color-coded the little markers on our google map (that he customized for our trip) so we could see what we were doing on which day just by looking at the map. So when we got to the airport at 3:30, we knew we had about 2.5 hours to get to our hotel in Manhattan and then to walk to 44th street to make our dinner reservation @ 6:00 at Carmines. It all went perfectly.

The taxi ride was about what I expected. The driver dodged in and out of traffic, honking and calling people names with a thick middle eastern accent. But he got us there safely and the ride wasn't as long (or as expensive) as we thought it would be. What I realized as soon as we were in Manhattan was that it seemed like the vehicles were totally driving on a pedestrian thoroughfare instead of the other way around. There were people everywhere! And people on bikes and scooters didn't feel the need to obey traffic laws (like stopping at red lights, or staying in their lanes) It seems like there'd be fatal car accidents all the time. I would hate to drive any kind of vehicle in that city.

We stayed at the Windham a few blocks south of Times Square. We got checked in and unpacked with a good bit of time to go exploring before supper. Here's what our view from the room looked like.

Not sure what all these buildings were (except the New Yorker, of course!) but I was glad not to be looking at a brick wall from an adjacent building. The room was small but very neat and clean and exactly what we needed.

We took off with our map and headed for Times Square. On the walk I realized that: 1)there are all together too many people in too small a space 2) all these people walk really fast. Where are they going that they have to walk at such a fast pace (with head down and ear buds in)? 3) this many people (and cars and trucks and hot dog stands) in this small a space smell really bad. The combination of exhaust and cigarette smoke and food stands and B.O and trash was very shocking initially. It's sad that I got used to it in such a short time. I doubt the folks that live there even know what real fresh air smells like.

With our trustee map, we made it easily to Times Square and took these pictures (these are just some, I won't stick all of them in).


So I have to say that New York City in general, and Times Square in particular, is so very iconic. As international as this city is (and it is; we heard tons of different languages being spoken all the time) it couldn't be more 'American'. From the Statue of Liberty to Park Avenue to Wall Street to the giant Coke screen in Times Square, these are the things that the rest of the world knows because of America. Kinda cool. Another thing that was really cool about Times Square: even at 11:00 at night, it is as bright as day because of all those lights. It was unreal!

We made it to Carmine's a few minutes early! They went ahead and sat us and we enjoyed a great meal of cheese ravioli and yummy bread. Then we ordered tiramisu. Carmine's is a place that serves 'family style' sized portions and each dish is meant to feed about 4 people. That includes desserts. So here's what our dessert looked like:

And no, we didn't eat all of it. Barely half but it was yuuuuummmmmyyyy!

We had purchased tickets to Top of the Rock online so we headed over to Rockefeller Center next. Top of the Rock is what we did instead of going to the Empire State Building. Eric had read nothing but unpleasant reviews about the Empire State Building (things like, huge crowds and long lines) and since 30 Rock is only a few floors shorter than the Empire State Building, we thought we'd do that. It was great. We arrived early and got right into the elevator that zipped us up really fast and we had as much time as we wanted on the 3 levels of observation decks. Here's some of those pics.




We headed back down to the bottom of 30 Rock and found that there's a mall or something underneath it with all sorts of shops. It was after 9:30 or so by that time so lots of those things were closed but we looked around a while. There were still men in suits hustling by on their phones. I'm like, "I would hate to still be in a suit at 9:30!" And where are they going at this hour that they have to run while texting? What can you be late for, business-wise, at this hour? Clearly, I have no idea about what it takes to make corporate America run!

We meandered back through Rockefeller Plaza and Times Square and got safely back to the hotel without getting lost which was nice. Tomorrow, I'll tell you about Tuesday, which I think was my favorite day. Hope you enjoy all the pictures.

D