NYC with Min

Ok, you know how when you are hanging out with your friends and somehow the idea of a "girls trip" comes up, and everybody is excited and saying things like "that would be so fun, we should totally do that!" and then for whatever reason, nothing ever comes of it?

yes? no? just me?

Anyway, last summer, I was sitting in my friend Mindy's kitchen and talking about our recent family trip to New York City.  (She asked) Anyway, that same old subject came up about how it would be so fun to take a girls trip to NYC sometime, and I made some comment like "That would be awesome!" and "I'll take care of the hotel!" (love those frequent flyer perks) and John heard all this and as he opened up his laptop said, "Sounds like a great idea, you girls deserve it, what weekend works best for you?"  And proceeded to make it happen. (He's awesome like that.)

And that is how it came to be that I went to NYC with Mindy for my birthday.

New York City is awesome.  I love it.  Mindy had never been, so she had me play tour guide and we spent a couple days running around the city. 

First, we ate dinner at Ellen's Stardust Diner. (It's kindof a tradition and highly entertaining)

Then we went to the Empire State Building.  I loved how even the Christmas decor was art deco.

We even paid the extra bucks (totally not worth it) to go to the highest observation deck.  However, standing up there about as close to the heavens as you can get, right before our very eyes we saw a shooting star.  I took it as a good sign that we were going to have a great trip.  (And we did)

We traveled mostly by subway as it's the fastest and cheapest.  I love this picture, but funny story, as I heard the train coming I thought, "This would be a great picture!" so I quickly tried to move Mindy into position to get "the shot", but she thought I was trying to push her into the oncoming train. I freaked her out a little bit. (She wasn't in any danger.)

That night we hit the midnight showing of the premier of The Hobbit.  Unfortunately jet lag and lack of sleep the night before caught up to us both and we both had a hard time remaining conscious during the movie.

As a runner, Mindy really wanted to go running in Central Park.  She planned on getting up early the next morning and go before we started our day.  Somehow we had alarm clock failure and didn't wake up until noon when the maids came in to clean.  We must have been very tired.

The first item on our agenda the next day was to visit the Statue of Liberty.  Unfortunately hurricane Sandy had taken it's toll on Liberty and Ellis Islands, and visitors were not allowed.  The best we could do was take a harbor cruise.  That was still pretty cool. 

 

We did some shopping and checked out Rockefeller Center.  We both wanted to ice skate, but it was crazy crowded, and the line was ridiculously long.  It must be a pretty popular thing to go ice-skating at Rockefeller center, especially at Christmas time.

One of the things Mindy wanted to do was see Wicked.  She never had, but she felt bad that I had, and kept arguing that we could "see something else".   I argued that Wicked is worth seeing again and again, and while there were other shows I would like to see, there wasn't anything I wanted to see more. 

She loved it.  She even agreed that if the roles were reversed, she would feel the exact same way, so by the end of the night she didn't feel guilty about "making" me see it again.

The next day after Mindy's run through Central Park, which she loved and felt totally safe doing so,  (despite her friend's warnings that she was going to be murdered "Haven't you seen CSI?!?") we headed up to The Met. If I had to pick just one museum in New York to visit, this would be it.

After The Met, we walked through Central Park to see the famous Bethesda fountain.  It's featured in a number of movies, but I texted a picture of it to Nick with the caution to "Don't Blink!".   The fountain is featured in a particularly scary episode of Doctor Who. Like as in the angels come alive and kill you when you're not looking. (Even blinking)

Since we were practically in the neighborhood, we headed over to see the LDS temple,

which by the way, is right across the street from Juilliard. 

I found this tree pretty amusing. 

After spending my childhood visiting the lights at Christmas time at temple square in Salt Lake, and taking my kids to see the Christmas lights at the Mesa temple, I laughed to see that despite the lack of space, they still wanted to get in on the Holiday festivities as well.

Dinner that night was spent in Little Italy where we ate until we were sick.

Funny story, all day long we were seeing people dressed as Santa Claus everywhere we went.  (And more than a few scantily clad Mrs. Claus'.) We even saw a couple Buddy the Elfs, a snow man, and even someone dressed up as a letter to Santa.  I finally got up the nerve to ask this couple what was up.  It was a "Santa Crawl" I'm not sure of the exact details, but the gist of it is dressing like Santa and visiting various bars that are participating.  We had been seeing people ALL DAY.  Since breakfast. This couple was getting a "late start".  I think the most disturbing part though, was that we had seen little kids, in strollers, dressed up as well.

After exploring the nine floors of the flagship store of Macy's, we both waved the white flag and headed home early to our hotel to put up our aching feet and watch TV.  (party animals)  It took awhile for us to each admit that that was all we wanted to do, each of us worrying that we would be a lame ol' party pooper.  Such is life.  Besides, good friends can still have fun whether they are out painting the town red, or just simply "hanging out."

One last thing, the craziest thing happened on the way home.  We were at the airport, on the plane, and the plane was was loaded and ready to take off, and as it was taxiing towards the runway, a birthday balloon got sucked into one of the engines and broke it.  For reals.  In the pilot's over 30 years experience, he had never even heard of that happening.  I'm just glad it happened on the ground.  The ensuing never ending wait in what has got to be the ghetto-est airport in the country was the one dark spot on what was otherwise a fantastic weekend.