Adri and I decided that we need a vacation to somewhere on the east coast that she has never been. And, if you consider that (outside of meeting my parents in Michigan before we were married) she has never been east of Colorado, it was more a matter of which of the many places to go as opposed to when we should go. So, as we talked and brainstormed, we debated Washington D.C., Chicago, and New York City. Well, after much talk, and finding the prices of flights were the cheapest, we decided on the great city that never sleeps... New York City. We hopped on a red-eye flight out on Thursday to be in the great city through Sunday night. And what a trip it was.
We checked into our hotel Friday morning about 8am. Thanks to all the traveling with my job we had enough points to stay in the Hilton Times Square, right in the thick of things, for free. Can't argue with free-ninety-free. We got to our room and saw a beautiful scene right from our window. The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building were in direct line with our window.
After we had unpacked our stuff and slept for about 2 hours, we decided to venture into Times Square. We walked around enjoying the scenery, the people, and the random stuff. We'll just call this lady Pastey. We still aren't sure what she is supposed to be representing, and where the inspiration came from. But, I think we can be pretty certain this doesn't represent the New York Marathon because I don't think the rules and regulations of such a race would allow for this kind of running... sorry Adri.
Next on the list of Times Square randomness were the herd of sheep that Adri just had to kiss. They looked almost like the Serta Mattress Sheep, or claymation like Wallace and Gromit. Regardless, it was another interesting things to see.
As we continued to walk around we started shopping in some of our favorite stores that you can't find in Salt Lake; namely H&M and Zara. In our search for the perfect clothes to take back to Salt Lake that we felt no one else would have we ran into Mega Mind cleaning the streets. Not sure why he changed to a white outfit, but hey, I guess it helps him to blend into the rest of the crowd there.
At lunch time we just had to go to a local favorite... The Shake Shack. Fantastic burgers, crinkle-cut fries and the best shakes ever (which they call concretes, probably because they are so heavy that they sit in your stomach like concrete).
As we continued to enjoy ourselves we ran into a guy selling comedy club tickets to a show tonight. His phrase to get our attention was, "Do you like black people?" How do you ignore something like that without being called racist? He tried to offer us a great deal, but we had to pass it up. We can't pass up the opportunity to take Adri to her first ever Broadway play. And what better place to start than with Phantom of the Opera. We walked over to TKTS and waited in line for half price tickets and got in that night. She was so excited that she even got a little emotional and almost cried. I'll forgive that because I guess when you've been growing up dreaming about it all your life, that would be an appropriate reaction.
After the show we had to call it quits for the night. No more time walking around, and we didn't want to overload Adri... at least not yet. So, we called it a night, excited and giddy about what was to follow the next day.
We got up in the morning and decided to head out towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Along the way we stopped by Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Plaza (that picture is for Danny and Denise) and some really cool old church.
After exploring everything in that vicinity we decided to hail Adri's first taxi and head up to the Met. The guy who picked us up was quite nice, and quite aggressive in his driving. In fact, I think he was about 100 times more aggressive than Adri. I didn't know that was possible.
Once we arrived at the Met we were ready to take off our jackets, and just enjoy some good art and history. We walked up to the counter to get our tickets, I had the lady my credit card and asked for two tickets. She then asked if my wife had the same credit card. We told her yes, and she asked if she could see it and our licenses. Odd... why do we need to pay with two different cards that go to the same account. Come to find out, the first weekend of every month a Bank of America card gets you into the museum for free. Again, you can't argue with free-ninety-free. In our ever free nature we enjoyed some great artwork. Asian pieces, which were some of Adri's favorites.
Then we saw a Van Gogh self portrait, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack. We just really enjoyed ourselves. There were so many cool pieces, sculptures, weapons, and so on. We spent a few hours there and didn't see even close to everything.
This painting was very interesting. It was titled "Mark." Maybe this is what I am going to look like in my mid to late 40s, who knows. Although, personally, I think it looks more like my dad when he was younger. Well, having said that, maybe it is what I am going to look like when I'm older. Creepy... who do they do that?
Once we left the Met we walked through Central Park on a beautiful day. No wind, no rain, and in the 50s. Not bad weather to be in New York. Sorry, no pictures... Adri had to pee so bad that she wouldn't let us stop to do anything in the park. We go through the park and stopped so she could use the restroom and then headed to Patsy's for some New York style pizza and pasta.... mmmmm! We then walked by the temple, wishing we had thought to bring clothing to go in. It is officially on our list for next time.
After seeing the temple and the Julliard School for the Performing Arts we went back to the hotel for a break. Got dinner and called it a night, and an interesting night it was soon to become. At about 4:30am our neighbors came home. A group of probably middle-aged women on a girls night on the town came home singing and screaming, and just being more loud and obnoxious than anyone would want to hear at 4:30 in the morning. We woke up to their noise and Adri rolls over and asks me to call the front desk. "I don't want to call the front desk. Give it a couple minutes and maybe they'll pass out." 10 minutes later they were still as loud as ever, if not louder. I got up, used the little boys room and then an idea hit my like a bolt of lightening. I walked over to the phone and dialed a number... boop, boop, beep, boop. Suddenly you hear the women next store quiet down a bit and their phone is ringing. "Hello?" "Hi! This is John at the front desk. We are getting complaints about your room." "Oh, I'm so sorry." Click... silence the rest of the night, not even a peep! Yeah, I called their room and pretended to be the front desk... mission accomplished!
We got up the next morning to rain and decided that we would venture out for as long as we could, but this time we would hop on the subway. Again, a first for Adri. On the subway we ran into Spider-Sax. He wasn't the real Spider-Man because he tried to spray me with web when I went to take the picture and nothing came out... so I shall call him Spider-Sax.
We road the subway south the the Brooklyn Bridge. It was awesome to be on the bridge practically alone, but it rained so we didn't get a whole lot of pictures. No worries, we still had a great time. We also went to China Town and Canal Street and walked around looking at all the counterfeit stuff there. Unfortunately we didn't hit the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street or Ground Zero. It was just too rainy and windy to do that.
The trip really was awesome. It went by in a blurry three days, but was worth every moment. It is on our list to visit again one day. We'll probably just hit everything that we didn't get to hit this time. We would recommend it to anyone and everyone, and we hope that everyone gets the chance to one day see the city that never sleeps.
