NEW YORK

I'm going to try to speed through this the best I can.

We arrived at 1 am on Thursday night to a cold and wet Philadelphia. The next morning we drove to Manhattan. Glade didn't bring a coat and it was pretty chilly and windy. We drove around looking for a Walmart. Even with a GPS, we just couldn't get there but luckily, we ran across a Costco so we stopped and bought him a nice big coat. Away we went. We took a lot of random pictures of things you usually just hear about. The amazing thing to me was that here is Carnegie Hall. It's just the front of a building with a little sidewalk. No big entrance with parking and a courtyard or anything like that. Just a little building front. Not what I expected.


This is from the famous Carnegie Deli. I don't do pastrami so I got the roast beef. This is the half I didn't eat. It was really just a cold lump of meat. Not that great. The onion rings on the other hand..YUM! I would suggest skipping this. They only take cash, this sandwich all by itself was $15 and the workers were RUDE! Not worth it. We decided to take it with us, heat it up the next day and eat it. Glade carried it in his pocket the rest of the night wrapped up. When he took it out, blood was oozing all over inside his coat..Nasty! It didn't get eaten.

Radio City Music Hall, a little more of an entrance, but still not much. It was really fun to just see everything you have only heard about.

This was just in front of a financial building. It was a big water thing with huge "glass" ornaments in the middle of the water. Really pretty. We were nice about offering to take pictures for others and in turn they were usually nice back. It was really cold and windy so one of the first things we did was buy a hat for myself. Not really a hat person, but it was very warm. I would say 7 out of 10 people had some kind of hat on.



These were all over the place near central park. We didn't ride in one, too cheap, but they looked really cozy and romantic. I have to say that everything we knew about NY came from Seinfeld. We had a reference for most everything, it was kind of fun. I'm sure you all remember this one with the horse and the Costco beans. Ewww.





These snowflakes were right on Saks 5th Avenue's store front. They blinked to the song playing. This is the view of Saks from the big tree in Rockefeller Center.


This was inside Saks. It's the Swarovski Crystal Star. It was very sparkly and big. I was enthralled with the beauty inside this store. We visited all 13 floors of it. Couldn't afford a single thing. We were very intrigued by how small most stores were, but had several levels. When we were looking for gloves and scarves, we went to Old Navy. I think there were 9 floors to that one. Even the Walgreens had more than one level. Weird.

This is the view of the big tree from Saks. It wasn't as big as I had in my mind. We wanted to ice skate, but the first night we were there, someone had rented it out. The second day, it was too crazy and crowded. Not to mention COLD. The high most of the time we were there was around 35 degrees. Plus it was windy. I loved all the sparkly trees around the ice rink.

In Time's Square, there is a big set of lit up red steps. We have no idea what they are for, but we went on them since everyone else was. This is a picture from up there. I didn't love Time's Square, a little too Las Vegas-y for me. It was always really crowded and busy. We tried to win tickets to see White Christmas right here, but we weren't picked. By the time we got to the ticket office to buy tickets to another show, Stomp, they were sold out. Dang!

This is a picture of the T-Rex inside Toys R Us. There is also a 3 story ferris wheel inside the store. Crazy.

I love this picture. This is what we looked like most of the time. Totally lost and confused in the Subway. We always knew where we were, just not which direction to go next. You can't really see north and south with all the buildings. Luckily the blocks are really small so you only needed to walk a block to figure out if you went the right way. People were very friendly in the subway, even though they were usually wrong about which way to go. One of my favorite memories happened on the Subway. There are tons of performerss down there looking for money. The saxophones were beautiful. Someone was playing Jingle Bells and a man jumped on the train right before the doors closed. He says loudly to himself "jingle bells go to hell!" Then he starts whistling it with a little bee bop to go with it. Another time the lady driving the train very irritatingly asks "Please don't block the doors." The next stop, it happened again and she got on the speaker and says "Stop blocking the doors!". She was funny.

This was the coldest morning there. We were out by the Statue of Liberty and it was really windy. I didn't feel like taking the 3 hour ferry tour so we just looked from afar and left. This is us trying to take our own picture with the city behind us. If you look close, I'm sure you can see my teeth chattering.

This too is one of my favorites. It's from behind, she didn't switch hands! But I love it with the willows down in front. Great job Glade!

This is a warm and fuzzy for me. It was late and cold and we hadn't eaten yet. We were down in Little Italy and it was so cute! Very decorated and charming. We finally found a place without a wait to eat. It was pink and tacky with colored lights hanging around. We were packed in like sardines and it was noisy, but it was so welcoming. People laughing, warm pasta, soft glow of lights. Seriously, I loved it! I also brought my Pepsi can home from here. It actually says New York on the can.

Ok, usually blogger flips the pictures the right way but this time it didn't. This is me in my NY jeans. Just thought I should document that. I actually comfortably wore them. It probably helped that we walked several miles a day and only usually ate one meal a day. (And a treat or two..lol) Don't laugh at my ugly shoes. I took cute shoes, but after the first night there, I decided I didn't care if I was cute or not, you have to walk A LOT!!!


On Sunday we had a few different ideas of what to do and didn't really feel like doing any of them. We had been by Central Park but not in it. It looked like it would be dead and ugly anyway. We decided to venture in on Sunday and I'm so glad we did. It was Beautiful. It was almost like we got to see it in the fall. We wanted to show the temperature, the warmest it had been since we got there.

Also ranked as one of my favs. This turned out so cute. We walked around for about 2 hours just holding hands and taking in the sights. A lot goes on in Central Park! There were tons of people there as well as games, activities, vendors and lots of trails.

This picture holds lots of memories. We were really just seeing what it would look like behind us so we weren't really trying to look good, but I kinda liked the serious look. We were really setting up for the NEXT picture!

This is funny because we tried several takes of this but after the first one I couldn't quit giggling so they were all goofy. It was fun.

Remember how I said there were lots of performers? Well this guy was just standing like this not moving. Everyone around was admiring from afar and taking pictures. I was in a mood so I decided to walk right up to him. It was funny how many people followed me. By the time I left, there were probably six or seven people there. He eventually broke and started laughing. He even let us take a picture with him for free, no tip jar or anything!

We thought this was the Friends fountain from the opening song so I was pretending to splash around in it, it was empty. A little later on our walk we found the real one but I was over it by then.

The real Friends fountain. Very small.

This is a bus driving not very slowly down a one way street. If you look closely at both sides, he has very little room. It was shocking at how skinny the streets were. People honk all the time and that gets really annoying. Glade learned to be a crazy driver just like the rest. The motto in NY is "just go". That applies to driving, walking, everything. If you wait for someone to let you in or make room, you wont' get anywhere. At one point, by Rockefeller Center, cars were totally stopped and surrounded by pedestrians. Couldn't move at all. They finally closed down the street.

This is a funny picture to have, but this is how they do garbage. You literally just pile it out on the street and the garbage truck comes by and picks it up. Yuck!

To finalize, we had a great time. I wouldn't want to go back necessarily. Can't afford to shop or see shows or do the fun stuff so really it was just about seeing all the things you hear about. Just the time away together was nice. We had so much fun finding Seinfeld references. We even listed them, but I won't go into that. Although, we almost hit Ping! As for the things we loved and didn't, Pizza and churros are much better at Costco. The best thing about the cold is coming in from it. The first night is when I realized it. We stopped at Lindy's for a piece of pie and hot chocolate. Another warm and fuzzy. It was quiet with soft Christmas music playing and warm stuff to eat. That's what's great about the cold...getting warm. We didn't do much of the big sightseeing things in depth, once we saw it, it didn't seem necessary to SEE it. Central Park was definitely worth seeing, not so much Chinatown. The people were actually very friendly and helpful, the workers: not. The flight home was LLLOOONNNGGGG. But time went fairly quickly since we decided to upgrade to first class...NICE!! Highly recommend it. Having a car there is expensive. I couldn't believe how much that cost us, just to park it so we could pay to ride around the city on the subway. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a little snow fall. In my dreams....