New York: Part 1

Our most recent trip was to New York City, New York over spring break (the first week of April).  I'm a little behind blogging our trips, perhaps I'll catch up after school is out :-).  But New York is still fresh in my mind, and I like to write these while I remember the little details.

We used airline miles to pay for the tickets, so we flew out of San Francisco on a direct flight to Newark.  On a side note, if you ever need to do a Park and Fly package out of SFO, we have really liked the Vagabond Inn Executive Hotel in Burlingame.  Free shuttle to the airport, free breakfast (oatmeal, yogurt, bagels, waffles, juices, etc).  Parking package much cheaper than SFO parking.  We ended up flying into Newark around 5:30.  A few days before, there had been a Groupon for a car service from any New York airport to anywhere in Manhattan, so we had a car waiting for us.  Which was pretty awesome.  It ended up about $10 more than it would have been for both of us to take the train in.  Score #1.

We stayed in a rented room we found off of airbnb.com.  I was a little nervous about this, but there were a lot of reviews and all of them were very good.  It ended up being an awesome deal.  $80 a night, a few blocks south of Central Park.  The Comfort Inn by Chinatown is $210 a night, just for reference.  Here's a picture of the room (there's a bookshelf and table to the left, a closet and the door behind where I was standing).  

We shared a bathroom with the owner, but it was very clean.  We never saw him, except the day we got there and he gave us keys.

We went to the famous Halal Guys halal cart (basically chopped up meat, rice, a pita, and some sort of sauce all in a pie tin.  Very tasty) and met Matthew and Daniel, Stephen's brothers, there.  From the halal cart we headed down to Jack Demsey's, the New York home of the Kentucky Wildcats to watch the national championship.  Stephen is, and always has been, a huge Kentucky fan, so this was very exciting.

It was absolutely packed.  After walking around for a while looking for a table, I asked a guy and a couple who were sitting at two booths that were connect if we could join them (they weren't together and there were a bunch of seats between them).  They said sure, so we were lucky enough to get seats.  The couple is actually from Lexington, KY, and I believe the older guy was an alum.  That's his white hat in the picture below.  Every basket or steal lead to huge cheers from everyone and bad calls were universally boo'd.

Matthew, Stephen, and Daniel at the entrance

The next morning we slept in a little (we were still on Pacific time), and headed to Central Park around 10.  We walked from our room, stopping to get a famous NY bagel :-).  It didn't seem that special to me, but I love a good bagel and cream cheese, so it was still good.  We had an app that made it very easy to tour Central Park, highly recommend it if you're going.

Bethesda Fountain, they were filming a pilot for a new show while we were there, so we ended up being shooed away.

Literacy Walk

Beautiful day!

Looking through one of the bridge's flower decoration

Turtles sunning themselves in the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Resovoir

It would be very easy to get lost in this, the Ramble I think it was called.

From there we headed back to our room and changed to get ready for the David Letterman show.  We had gotten a call the week before (after requesting tickets in January), and they asked Stephen a trivia question (which he got right), so we got free tickets.  

We ended up sitting on the floor level about 10 rows back from the stage.  It is pretty surreal to see the stage that you've seen so many times on t.v. in real life.  We got a long speech to get us ready, were they told us to "laugh now, think about it later" and not to do a "woo."  I didn't realize how much I did "woo" when I meant to be cheering.  I had never thought of myself as a woo girl before, perhaps I should work on that.  The show was ok, funnier in person than it usually is on t.v., but it was the experience we were going for anyway.

Afterwards, we hopped on a bus down to Times Square, had some dinner at Tratteria Trecoli (good Italian), and went to our Broadway show.  We saw Best Man, a political show that just opened.  We were going more for the cast than the show itself.  In the end, the play was pretty good and the cast was outstanding.  Take a look at the cast list below:

Not only was the cast amazing, but we were literally in the very front row, in the very center.  By theater standards these are "bad" seats because you have to look up a little onto the stage.  But I could've touched Angela Lansberry or James Earl Jones or Candice Bergen without even standing up.  Several times.  But then I would be kicked out.  So it wouldn't have been worth it.  Candice Bergen did make eye contact with me though!  At least I think she did.  Every time a new character was introduced, Stephen and I looked at each other like "can you believe this??"  These are people I've grown up seeing in movies and on tv, and there they were in person!  Pretty incredible.

Not too shabby for our first full day in New York :-).

The next day we moved all our stuff to Matthew's dorm room (where we were going to be staying the next three nights).  We moseyed around a little and then Stephen and I headed for the Museum of Natural History.  It made me want to watch Night at the Museum :-).  

This is what a mosquito looks like magnified.  Can I just say, ew.

GIANT blue whale

We headed back through Central Park to catch the last few sights we hadn't seen the day before (we ran out of time because we had to get to the David Letterman show).  Plus, I wanted to eat a hot dog from a food cart in Central Park.  Seems like something you can do while in New York.  So we got our hot dog (and roasted peanuts, also good), and headed to the Imagine memorial.

From here you can see the apartment where John Lennon lived (and Yoko Ono still does) and was killed.  There's a "docent" who gives a little history lesson every once in a while.  We sat near here on a bench and ate our hot dog while we waited for Matthew and Daniel.

We tried to go see the carousel, but it's closed for renovation.  And by renovation, I mean all the horses are off and they've stripped the base down to the wood.  Oh well, next time.  

We took the subway to 5th Avenue and walked down 5th Avenue.  Stephen wanted to get a book from the Barnes and Noble.  

Rockefeller Tower

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Then we headed for the Empire State Building.  Matthew is going to King's College, a Christian University in the Empire State Building.  As a "tenant," not only did he get half price tickets, he also got to skip every single line.  Every single line.  If you've ever been up to the top of the Empire State Building, you know this is a big deal.  We were like VIP's.  Whenever anyone saw our tickets, they would say "oh, you're a tenant, right this way" and let us pass everyone.  I always hate those people when I'm in line.  But it's pretty awesome to be those people.  We got up there right before sunset.  Here's some views:

Stephen messing with Matthew or Daniel looking through the binoculars

After that we headed for Katz's Deli.  I didn't know anything about it and Matthew didn't make it seem like anything special.  But it's the deli in When Harry Met Sally and is famous for it's pastrami.  I had half a pastrami sandwich and matzo ball soup.  It was very good.

 At this point, I realized I had a bladder infection.  For any male reading this, or any female who has never had one, let me tell you, it sucks.  Like majorly.  I called Kaiser and they were able to write a prescription and send it to Walgreens in Vallejo (apparently that's where the call center was).  Once it was in Walgreen's system, we could pick it up anywhere.  But then the Walgreens we were going to ended up be a 24 hour store but not a 24 hour pharmacy.  We were staying with Matthew in his dorm room, and he shares a jack and jill bathroom with his roommate.  And 19 year old college boys are not known for clean bathrooms, either.  (No offense Matthew!)  With a bladder infection, I was desperate for my own bathroom.  We ended up walking to a nearby hotel and staying there for the night.  And then took a taxi to a Walgreen's that had a 24 hour pharmacy.  We slept until 11:30 the next day, so we didn't quite get to everything I'd hoped we would.

The next morning we couldn't get back into Matthew's building until he got back from his classes, so even after sleeping in we had to stop at a coffee shop.  It ended up being a really great little shop called Berkli Parc, and it's owner actually went to UC Berkeley.  I had a breakfast sandwich and a tea, Stephen had a flavored coffee, and they were all really great.

After leaving our stuff in Matthew's dorm, we headed for Times Square.  

The ferris wheel inside Toys R Us.  Yes, inside.

The "cars" of the ferris wheel.

Inside the M and M's store

Matthew and us in Times Square

We hopped on the subway and headed for the flatiron building.

In Madison Square Park there's a place called the Shake Shack that's famous for it's cheeseburgers and shakes.  The cheeseburgers were kind of like In n Out, but the buns were better.  The shake was probably the best I've ever had, though.  I had the caramel one, it was amazing.

Madison Square Park and the Shake Shack

Then we got back on the subway and headed up to 5th Avenue and the Apple Store.  Some people travel around to all the baseball fields or national parks.  We hit Apple stores.  We've now been to the Apple store in the Louvre shopping area in Paris, Covent Garden and Regent Street in London, San Francisco, Cupertino, and the Apple Store on 5th Avenue (we did go to the Grand Central Station one, too, that will come later).

Standing under the stairs looking up

Stephen, Matthew, and Daniel

Brothers!

Mirror room in FAO Schwartz

Giant peeps (stuffed animals)

The ceiling of the mirror room in FAO Schwartz

That night for dinner we went over to Brooklyn and had pizza at Grimaldi's, which is literally underneath the Brooklyn Bridge.  The pizza was good, made with a coal heated brick oven that we could see really well from our table.  I had wanted to walk across the bridge at some point, but it was dark and cold and we were all tired.  We never did get back to do that, but maybe we will someday.