The Big Apple - Day 1

Paul and I were lucky enough to get away to New York this past weekend to celebrate our 12 year anniversary.  My mom is so amazing at watching the kids - we are so, so lucky to have her willing and available to keep them (for the record, the rest of our family is pretty great too - Mom just happened to be the "lucky" one who got them this time).   We left them in capable hands and flew out on the first flight out Friday morning. Folks we got to NYC at 7:30 - that's how early our flight was (yawn).  Paul charmed the airline worker and somehow we got upgraded to First Class on the way up.  It was fabulous but hard to enjoy the full extent of first class goodness (i.e. cocktails) at 6am but it was a comfortable ride.  We got a taxi right away after landing at Laguardia and headed into the city!

We dropped off our luggage at the hotel and started walking around.  Our ultimate destination was South Street Seaport to the TKTS booth so we could see about getting discounted tickets to a Broadway show on Saturday afternoon.  We walked for a while stopping to indulge at Magnolia Bakery and finally we gave up and got a taxi the rest of the way.  We arrived at the booth 45 minutes before it opened and there was already a small line.  The wait was uneventful and we ended up scoring tickets to see Sister Act the next day.  We had lunch reservations at 12:30 at Gramercy Tavern so began the trek back toward midtown.  We got to walk through Chinatown and Little Italy on our walk.  It was pretty interesting and a little long.

Paul wanted to lunch at Gramercy Tavern after seeing special on it on the Travel Channel.  Apparently it's a pretty famous restaurant in the city.  It was good but it took a VERY long time to finish our meal...like hours.  Like twice they came over and said our timing seems to be off.  But, they ended up taking Paul's meal off our bill and giving me a free dessert so..you know..whatever.  After lunch we headed back to hotel to check in.  We were staying at the Waldorf Astoria (Paul travels a lot  = points = free stays = benefit to traveling).  We go to the Diamond Reception (see above..lots of travels) to check in.  We have to wait for a bit but finally they get to us.  There's some back story here which is really long and involved but let's just summarize by saying that last year we stayed there and it wasn't great so they invited us back.  We're checking in and the girl looks at our reservation and she's all like "oh my...Jordan really hooked you up, you're going to be surprised..I can't believe how much he hooked you up."  Paul and I keep looking at each other like "okay" what does this mean.  Finally Jordan, the manager, comes by and has to go specially make our keys (what the what??) and he escorts us to our room.  People we were on the 35th floor in the Presidential Suite.  Like THE Presidential Suite...apparently all the presidents who come to NYC to the Waldorf stay in this room.  It was CRAZY.  Ridiculous.  Like several thousand square feet.  A dining room.  Kitchen.  Seriously I'll do a separate post on this one.  So incredibly nice.  Paul and I kept looking at each other like "you sure you got the right people"  and "really..us??"  Insane.  And they sent up a bottle of wine.  We felt like we won the lottery!  We hung out in the room for a while contemplating if we were ever leaving but we managed to get in touch with my brother and made plans to meet up with him and his wife in Little Italy for drinks/dinner.

We took the subway to meet them which was an interesting experience.  We navigated the way pretty easily thanks to my brothers directions.  We found the restaurant with ease and enjoyed our time with Brad & Ginnie.  Brad was competing in a Tough Mudder race on Saturday and we had such an early morning that we didn't stay out too late but really enjoyed catching up with them.  We took the subway back and managed to make it to the hotel successfully!