Well, we are back home and trying to get back into our daily routine (meaning de-granparentizing Peyton, haha). To say Austin and I had an AMAZING time would still be an understatement. It was completely what we needed. Mommy and Daddy needed recharging and this trip did the trick! :)
I'll recap day by day on all the deets.
Wednesday: Our flight was at 6 am (yes we are a little bit crazy for booking so early but hey, we wanted to get the most out of our time there!) and we arrived in NY at about 8:30.
We Austin decided that we should take the subway from the airport train, into the city, so that's what we did. After an hour and a half of hopping train after train full of not so-nice-looking-people (let's just say, we stuck out like a sore thumb...BAD) we finally got to the city. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn, Times Square. It was a really nice hotel and a good location. Too bad the weather didn't want to cooperate, it rained nasty rain ALL DAY LONG. But we didn't let that kill our spirits, we walked around in it anyway!! We originally planned to do museums this day but everyone and their mothers were in line to do that so we decided to wander and shop instead. We had lunch at the Shake Shack. The hamburgers were SO good and their shakes are made with
custard...omg, YUM to the MY! My only request for the entire trip was to go to Serendipity, and I've always been told you have to wait in line forever or call (way) ahead to make a reservation. Well, we just winged it and to our pleasant surprise there was NO line!! So we got right in and I ordered their famous Frozen Hot Chocolate and Austin had their Apple Pie. We shared and both were divine! After a little shopping we ate dinner at John's Pizzaria. This was Austin's food request. He had eaten here a few times when he was away for work and wanted to take me badly. It was awesome pizza and the atmosphere was neat too. The building it's in used to be a church so the ceiling is stained glass and all of the details are very pretty. After trying to stay out "late", we retired to our hotel around 9:30 < Party animals right here people, ha ;)
Thursday: The weather cleared up and was beautiful!! We got up and headed to the Museum of Natural History. Very cool museum, extremely huge as well. There are like 6 floors full of exhibits...we didn't even get around to seeing everything. We had to go through kind of quickly because we had a tour of Ellis Island to get to. We grabbed some lunch to go from Shake Shack (again), grabbed a taxi, and headed to the water taxi for our tour. After waiting in line for like 30 mins we finally loaded the ferry and got to the Statue of Liberty. This was the only "touristy" thing we did as neither of us had done this before in our previous visits. We're glad we did it though because it was really neat to get up close and get our picture :) After the tour, we headed to the 9/11 site. To our dismay, they had everything blocked off and covered so you couldn't see all the work they'd done so far on the memorial. Boo. We did walk around a little memorial "museum" type thing they had set up. We passed the Wall Street "protesters"....the crowd was not very big for it getting so much publicity. There were like a gajillion cops though. We walked around a little more and then headed back to Times Square to find something for dinner. Our goal was to not eat at chain restaurants...we wanted find New York-only places to eat at. So we explored and stumbled upon Scarlatto's Italian. Again, SO GOOD!! Nothing compares to legit Italian, not even Carrabas, and I love me some Carrabas. After that, it was bedtime. (We can't party like we used to. Wait, we never did, lol)
Friday: *This is probably my favorite day. Again, the weather was beautiful. (The day before I had the Today Show on and saw that
COLDPLAY was going to be there to perform!!!)
So we got up early and headed to the Today Show. After finding out what time the concert started, we went and grabbed some breakfast at a little deli and then headed back to gather in the massive crowd. Coldplay sang 6 songs, one hit from each of their albums and two from their new one. They sounded awesome!! I've never seen them in concert but after this little preview even Austin wants to go to a real one. Seriously, SOGOOD! I took some (not so very good) pictures of the band and of the Matt, Al, and Natalie and then we walked around 30 Rock and the NBC Store. Since it was still fairly early, we decided to try getting into the Museum of Modern Art. The line was much smaller, so we decided to go. That was $25 each that we can never get back. I guess we aren't true "art lovers" because we found most of the pieces a joke. Two layers of brick in the middle of the room is art? I guess that means everyone's patio is art!! lol. Not to mention, way too much naked-ness for us. Afterwards we got lunch at another little deli nearby and headed to Central Park. The park was beautiful! Not to mention massive. We only walked maybe 1/3 of it. After our stroll, it was time to head back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. After our journey to the hotel (when we first arrived), we decided it was worth the $60 taxi ride back to the airport. My feet agreed as well. I will say, taxi drivers seriously know how to maneuver through that city, but you really feel like you're going to die in the process, lol. I did, however, find brand new Bulgari sunglasses in our cab! So they served as my souvenir ;)
Before we knew it, we were back home. My family brought Peyton to the airport so she got to see us get off the shuttle. The look on her face was priceless as she saw us because she was so surprised! lol. Thankfully, Austin and I both agreed that we didn't think our trip flew by. Time kind of paced itself, and
that was nice. As for Peyton, we talked with her everyday and even Skyped one night. She had a great time :) Knowing how content she was helped us to enjoy our time away even more. Thank you SOO much Mimi and Uby!!
*Picture post to follow :)
