I....LOVE....New York.......

We're back! We got home late Wednesday night from our too short trip up to NYC. We, along with hubby's business partner and his wife, took the train (THE BEST WAY TO TRAVEL, HANDS DOWN) to Penn Station. Traveling by train is just so cool; very low stress, and you get to look at cool stuff on the way. Granted some of the scenery isn't the most flattering, such as Baltimore, in which you see the backside of the bad part of town, and it's gross, but for the most part, it's really relaxing and sometimes mesmorizing to sit back and watch the scenery go by.

(Footnote to my last post re: things I want to do in my life - I want to do a cross country train trip some day. It takes about 3 days, but I would like to take the rail trip from DC to Seattle, via Montana and the upper Rockies. Not with small children, however.)

So we got to NYC and dumped our stuff at the hotel (The Hotel New Yorker, right across from Madison Square Garden. Clean, convenient, and relatively cheap for NYC). We went and had lunch at the Stage Door Deli next door. Great food, but too much of it! We were stuffed. Then we played tourist and took one of the Gray Line bus tours through the downtown area. I've been to NYC a few times, but have never ventured down past about 30th St. The tour, which is a hop-on, hop-off type of tour, was cheap and had a tour guide. We sat up on the top, exposed level of the bus until we couldn't stand the cold any longer. We went through Chinatown, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, SoHo, past Ground Zero (we didn't get off - there's really not much to see there anymore), past the Brooklyn Bridge, then back up the East Side, past the UN. It took a couple of hours to do that, and we didn't even get off the bus! We went back to the hotel and got ready for the show.

The main purpose of the trip was to go see "The Odd Couple", with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. We had seen them a couple of years ago in "The Producers", and just loved them, so when the opportunity presented itself last summer to get Odd Couple tickets, we jumped. And boy, oh boy, did we have great seats. Fourth row back, dead center stage. The actors could have spit on us, had they the desire. Now, Odd Couple hasn't exactly bowled the critics over; basically Lane and Broderick are rehashing variations of their standard characters; Lane is hyper and messy, Broderick uptight and whiney. But hey, it works. We had a blast.

And can I just say that Broadway theatres are just the coolest?! They aren't very big, and all of them have been lovingly restored at some point over the years. So many details; they just don't make em like that anymore.

After the show, we headed to Times Square, where we got something to eat at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Co. As far as I'm concerned, I don't ever need to eat there again. It was a perfectly boring meal.

Okay, back to the hotel for a terrible night's sleep (our room was right next to the elevators). We had breakfast at a diner the next morning, then headed out to do the Gray Line tour of Uptown. We got off at Lincoln Center because I wanted to pop in on a flute guy that I bought my piccolo from, Phil Unger at Flute Center of NY. Once we found his place, he was really nice. Even took mine and hubby's picture. I think that's the prize for actually FINDING him; it's not easy. Anyway, my companions were very patient with my one flute-thing that I had to do while I was there. My other trips to NYC have been to take a lesson with my teacher, Bart Feller, who is principal in the NJ Symphony and the NY City Opera. Turns out he lives directly across the street from Phil's shop. I had NO idea, or I would have stopped in sooner.

We hopped back on the bus and toured around the upper West Side (sheesh, the money!), then to Harlem, then down to Museum Mile, where we got off at the Met Museum of Art. We wanted to get some lunch at that point, but guess what? Certain parts of NYC, most notably to us at the point, the exact part WE were in, have NO restaurants. None, zip, nada, zilch. If you want to eat, it's a sidewalk vendor. We really wanted something more substantial, so we walked for a while down Madison Avenue (still no restaurants). Eventually we came to a little place, barely noticable, called Coco Pazzo. It was 2:45 at this point, and their lunch kitchen was closing at 3:00, but they graciously seated us. I have to say that without a doubt, that meal was one of my "Hall of Fame" meals. Simply unbelievable. I had veal scallopini that was sheer perfection. We had some great wine, good company, great desserts (we all shared), and the whole restaurant to ourselves. Our waiter was just great. I truly didn't want the meal to end, it was THAT good. So if you're ever in NYC and looking for a great meal on the East Side, check them out.

We then headed to FAO Schwartz, 'cuz you have to when you're in NYC, even if you don't have kids. We bought a couple of things for M&L (which were big hits, by the way), then caught a cab to Macy's.

NYC has truly got the cab thing down. Those yellow cars are EVERYWHERE. And hailing one is just like on TV; just raise your hand and one appears. It's a real power trip. But then you have to close your eyes when it gets moving, or else you fear your life will end in the next minute. I don't know how they keep from having an accident every 20 seconds; they don't stay in any form of a lane, and sometimes they just go tearing off through this miniscule openings that you think there's no way we're fitting through that! But somehow, you always arrive safe and sound (but a tad grayer) at your destination.

Once at Macy's we decided to see just how many floors there are. It's supposedly the biggest store in the world (or at least was once), but we had no idea HOW big. Can I tell you that that store is NINE, I repeat, NINE, stories tall?!!!! We just kept going up and up, expecting around the fourth floor for each to be the last. Nope. On and on, higher and higher. When we got to the furniture dept on the NINTH floor, we sat down and had to call someone just to tell them that we were on the ninth floor of the NYC Macy's. I know, how dorky can you get? But NINE FLOORS?! And very cool - as you go higher and higher, the escalators get older. By the sixth floor or so, the escalators are wooden. They still work just fine, but I guess they get less wear and tear since fewer people probably venture up to the top floors. Just us touristy geeks that want to see how high we can go.

We rode the elevator back down.

By that time, it was time to collect our luggage and head to the train station. We arrived very tired and with sore feet. When we got home, we found that our new kitchen/family room area had been drywalled, so it's starting to look more like a real room. The kids were safe and happy in bed, and I did the same shortly thereafter.

I love New York.......could NEVER in a gazillion years live there, but I sure love to visit.