N.Y.C. Day Two
Well one advantage of not having any time to blog, is that I get to relive our vacation night after night as I try to update :) So, on Friday morning we had planned on sleeping in, but honestly I was just too excited. I think I woke up at 6:30- crazy how wired we are to wake up early once we are parents!
One thing that was kind of "stressing me out" was getting to a couple of shows I have always dreamed of going to. One is Regis and Kelly (well now Kelly and Michael) however I didn't get tickets ahead of time so this would have meant standing in a stand by line at 7:00 which even though I was awake, I didn't want to be out of the door at 6:30. So at around 9:00 we walked over to the Rockefeller Center to check out the Today show (oh by the way, if you didn't know I was huge nerd before this trip, these posts will most certainly confirm this fact!)
As you can see, there was no one at the Today show on Friday. I guess they were on location in Florida or something? I actually don't watch it anymore, but it honestly was a big part of my morning life from the time I was a little girl, so I thought it would be cool to visit. Anyway, I was actually kind of relieved that they weren't there, because then I didn't feel guilty about getting over earlier. The other show I would absolutely love to go to is Colbert, but he doesn't tape on Friday so we will have to go back to New York sometime and do a T.V. show themed visit, ha! It was fun to look into the window where Matt, Savannah, Natalie, and Al tape their show every morning (nerd alert!).
My old BYU-I roommate/dance teammate Jennie Dean lives in New York City with her adorable family while her husband is going to PA school at Columbia. Of course I wanted to meet up with her somehow. We decided to meet for breakfast at Rockefeller Center. While we waited for them to arrive, Erik and I went into a cute chocolate shop and I drank the most delicious Mexican hot chocolate I've ever had. Yummy!
We met Jen and Brandon at Rock Center Cafe (I think that was the name). It was a fun place to eat, looking out at the ice skating rink. It was fun to see Jennie's cute kids and hear how they are getting along in the big city. They love it, and though Erik thinks I couldn't hack it, I think I would love it too.
After breakfast Erik and I got tickets to go to the very top of the Rockefeller building. It has the most amazing views ever. I guess the views are much better than the Empire State Building, and I have to admit I liked being able to see the Empire State Building in the view :)
The Carpenter song "Top of the World" kept going through my head while we were up there. So cool to think of the engineering marvels that these sky scrapers are!
Afterwards, we did a little shopping. Always a fun thing in my book!
I knew Jackson and Wyatt would be impressed if I went to the Lego store. It was fun thinking of the a little souvenir to bring them. We decided on a little Lego set of a taxi cab for Jackson.
And you know I had to at least pop in the American Girl store. Erik could not believe how expensive the dolls were. Good thing Anna is much too young for them now! :)
I am certainly no art expert, but I was much more moved by the pieces than I thought I would be. I could hear my Delta College art history teacher's voice somewhere in my head explaining the historical significance of certain pieces or things about the artists. Also reading the museums explanations about each piece helps a lot too :)
Some of my favorites.
Because our time was so limited we pretty much stuck to paintings and photographs. We could have easily have spent a few more hours in there though.
This was one of my favorites. It was done by an artist that escaped Germany pre WWII and when he arrived in New York he was utterly fascinated and fell in love with the jazz music of the time. This painting, with its short and long lines and "stops" inside of the lines represented the irregular or unconventional beats, pauses, and instuments of boogie woogie music. Since that is one of my favorite genres of music- I really appreciated the painting :)
It was so great to see Jennie! I hope she can come down to our place sometime while they are living back east!
Walking to the restaurant for dinner.
Hmm, I can't remember when we went to the Disney store, but at some point we did. It is quite big. At the Disney store, we got Anna her souvenir a Minnie Mouse as Statue of Liberty plush :)
Funny I didn't even realize I took a picture of the cocktail menu. We were really happy that we got into Carmine's on Friday night without a reservation. It was a place that a couple of people had told us to go to. Though we had already said goodbye to the Deans, when we realized that the portions they serve are pretty much gigantic ones meant to feed 5 people, we called them to see if they wanted to join us. It was a lot of fun, and deliciously scrumptious Italian food.
Yeah, I know, weird picture. But doesn't that dinner look good??
After dinner we walked over to the Newsies theater (on the right day too!). I was so excited to this show. I had read really good reviews of it, and I have fond memories of watching the movie as a kid (and to be honest Seize the Day is on of one of my running playlists!)
So the show really was a lot of fun. Erik liked it, but after the amazing experience we had at Wicked the night before, I think it was a bit of a let down for him. We were much further back, the costumes and sets are pretty bare (they are supposed to be street urchins after all), and we had a understudy for the lead girl that was not as good as the girl on the cast recording. However, the guy leads (still all of the originals) were awesome. I knew there would be great dancing and there was.
After the show we stopped by the Shake Shack that we had walked by the night before. I looked it up in the Zagat and it got a crazy good score, so I decided it was worth the wait. And wait we did. The line went out the door and around. However, after awhile we realized there was a separate and much shorter line if you were only getting ice cream which was nice.
Erik got a chocolate shake and I got salted carmel with chocolate truffle cookie dough ice cream. It was soooooo good! Perfect way to end a perfect kind of day :)
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