So last week I got to join two great friends from Texas, Mitra & Brooke in NYC. We were all supposed to get in on Thursday afternoon, and then head to the hotel. Of course, NYC decides to have thunderstorms all afternoon, so everyone's flights got cancelled/delayed, and we were all late getting in. Eventually we all got there & were able to meet up in time for a late dinner at this cute Italian restaurant that was right down the street from our hotel. Our hotel was in a great area - it was only a few blocks away from Central Park in one direction, and then just far enough away from the 5th Avenue shopping area to help you work off that bagel you ate for breakfast on the way down there.

I'm sure it's been said before, but NYC is seriously about the prettiest city I've ever seen. Maybe pretty isn't exactly the word, but that's about all I can come up with. It's just unique and awesome in a difficult-to-describe way.


The skyline is absolutely beautiful, and thankfully I was sitting next to this really nice guy on the flight in who pointed out all the major sites, like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, from the air. It was a great intro to Manhattan. The Chrysler building is still my favorite building....here it is below:

Me, Mitra & Brooke out at the Italian place where everyone spoke Spanish:

On Friday morning, Brooke had to get up early to go a conference, and Mitra and I slept in and then walked down to the shopping area around 34th St. & 5th Ave. Apparently our hotel was on the border of Hell's Kitchen, which sounds scary but wasn't. It was a very varied area - all different kinds of ethnic restaurants, flower stands, and the occasional soup kitchen/homeless shelter. We started out at Macy's, partly just to say we'd been there, and partly to check out their entire floor of women's shoes!

Below is just a random view of 34th St.:

We struck out shopping-wise, but had fun looking. We went through their Christmas department which had all these 1950's toys like Jacks and Pick-up-Stix. It felt very A-Christmas-Story-ish. Then we spent the rest of the morning wandering around the shops down that way, and waiting to meet up with Brooke when she was done at the conference. We eventually all met up, shopped a bit more, and then went home to get dressed to go out with my friend (and fellow AZCOM alum) Luke, who is an intern at St. Luke's Roosevelt in Manhattan.

View of Macy's from the outside:

They had these neat wooden escalators you could ride that were seriously made of wood and looked like they were original to the store:

Us out on the town our first day:

I got thirsty and so we stopped for Starbucks. Here we got to see God's way of saying you should always stop and talk to cute boys: Mitra left her purse in Starbucks, and if we hadn't stopped to talk to this guy (he's the doorman at the Russian Tea Room but that's just to pay the bills - he's really an actor...seriously!) it wouldn't have given the nice lady from Starbucks time to catch up to us and give Mitra back her purse! Take home lesson: always stop to make time for the cute guys.

The next morning Mitra and I got some coffee and bagels at a stand in Central Park and then walked around for a while. This bridge has been in a bunch of movies, none of which I can remember right now, but everyone stopped for pictures there because it was so pretty. There was this neat saxophone player you can see in the background, playing Christmas carols. I don't know how he did it - seriously it must've been in the 20s and it was windy! I gave him $2 for his fortitude.

Central Park was beautiful - the trees still had pretty yellow/orange leaves on them, and there were lots of people just milling about. Very relaxing.


Here's what it would've looked like if we'd been able to go back on our last day in NYC (it only snowed on the way out, of course!):



Here is a picture of the Trump ice skating rink in the park. You can't see the Trump Zamboni grooming the ice in this one, but it's there. Trump seriously has his name plastered on everything around there - even the Zamboni.

Heeding the lesson from the night before, we stopped to take a picture with these guys. Too bad you can't see the one taking the picture - he was by far the cutest but we couldn't figure out how to gracefully tell the older guy to get out of the picture and grab the camera from Cute Guy.

My camera wasn't good for much, but the one good thing about having a ridiculously slow shutter speed (yes, even on a digital camera!) is that my camera is so slow it can now take time-lapse pictures!!

Here's a better one of a random side of Times Square, which isn't actually a square:

Mitra & Brooke, getting ready to go out I think:

Luke, Me & Mitra just goofing around:

Me & Mitra attending a communist rally. Seriously - there was a pro-Chavez/anti-Bush rally going on outside - of all places - a VERY upscale mall and a Whole Foods. That cop was totally laughing at us:

Saturday night Mitra & I went to see the NYC Ballet perform "The Nutcracker" at Lincoln Center. It was so neat to be there - I've seen it on all kinds of PBS music specials, but it was really something else to be there in person. It really didn't feel as big as it looks in this picture, and even our view from the cheap seats was GREAT.



The ballet was beautiful, and it was so neat to see it again - I remember going quite a bit when I was little and I loved it. We had champagne and gummy bears at intermission. Very sophisticated. It was funny though - I remember people dressing up very formally for the ballet before, and here they were in everything from furs to un-tucked flannels and grubby jeans. Things have apparently changed quite a bit since I was little....

However, the Snowflake dance was beautiful, and made me forget the tacky people:



The Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince were pretty great too:



Mitra & I found this great, very "New-York-ish" cafe on the way that we liked so much we went back for dessert after the ballet. It was a fun night, and once again, I really didn't want to go back home. I can't wait to go back to NYC (and Boston too!) at the first opportunity!