"All the way to New York"...to wear a sequin dress from Goodwill

Day 5: Wednesday

We started the day taking a lingering walk through Central Park. I can't describe how amazing this park is. I was in love with it and always looking for an excuse to 'cut through the park'. We stopped by Strawberry Fields:

The fountain/bridge that is in so many movies and now I don't know what it's called:

Check out the pretty water lillies that were in the fountain:

Then of course I made Nate take a picture of me on one of the rocks. We were laughing that it was like my senior picture, ten years later.


You can see that we definitely got to enjoy some fall colors in the city!

After wandering through the park from the west to the east side, we had breakfast at TAL bagels, which was recommended to me from my NY friend, EA. Yum! After bagels, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Talk about overwhelming! You name it, it's at the Met. They also still had the roof open!



Beautiful views of the city & Central Park!

After the Met, we headed back through the Park past the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. One of the things that I loved about the Park is that there are so many random statues, bridges, nooks & crannies. This picture shows off my marc by marc jacobs gloves (that clearly do not match my outfit, but i was cold). Wrist Worms are all the rage. I think I may knit myself some.


We headed to TKTS to get tickets to another show, even though I wanted to avoid Times Square like the plague. We decided to get tickets to Mary Poppins. I used to love that movie as a kid and people, the show was even better. Mary Poppins actually flies over the crowd, up past the balcony! I felt like I was 8 years old.

Now is a good time to display my Broadway outfit. I had Nate take this picture for my cousin, LM, who was with me when I purchased this sequin dress at Goodwill. I found it and it fit perfectly and even still had tags on with extra sequins. The sequins are all hand sewn. I didn't know what I would ever wear it for, but loved it (and it's $6 price tag) so I bought it. Well you can get away with wearing anything in NYC so I took it along. I wore it out two nights - with a blazer and belt to tone it down a bit. It was a hit! And what better place to take a picture of yourself in a silver sequin dress but a faux tiger skin chair:

I felt even cooler when the entire first floor of TopShop was covered in sequins :)

And that was Day 5 of pretending to live in NYC :)

Title of this post comes from the first line of the song China by Tori Amos. Woman plays a mean piano.

Brooklyn Represent Y'All

Recap continues with Tuesday!

At the close of the last post, I alluded to a celebrity sighting that occurred on Day #4:

While The Empire Hotel was a great place, it was REALLY hot. They had an old heating system that once you turn on, it's on. We rectified this by sleeping with our window open.

At approximately 7 AM on Tuesday morning, we were woken up by some loud music. Nate went over to the window and said, "There's some sort of concert going on at Lincoln Center Plaza!". I jokingly said, "Maybe it's Carrie Underwood" because Nate had met her guitarist in the elevator the other day. "Well, it is some tiny blonde chick" was his response. Since neither of us really listen to her music, we didn't recognize the song. We decided to throw some clothes on and go check it out. Did not brush the hair, the teeth, or even look in a mirror.

Turns out, it WAS Carrie Underwood - she was performing three songs for the Good Morning America Fall Concert Series:

We stayed for the concert. On our way to get coffee, we saw a bunch of black Escalades parked on the other side of Lincoln Center so we decided to hang out there to see if we could meet her.

We first met Sam from GMA and then Robin:


Note that we were looking a little gross.

At that time, Nate & I were the only people hanging around. The middle schoolers quickly came and then the 45-50 year old cohort of the offical carrie underwood fan club joined in. Seriously - these women were decked out in the official t-shirts and had the official tote bag. I probably wouldn't be making fun of them right now except that they were so obnoxious. For example, they were planning what they were going to say when Carrie arrived and one of them actually suggested saying, "how y'all doing" in a deliberately fake southern accent. At that point, Nate & I knew we had to stay to see how this all played out.

Carrie came and signed everyone's autograph and took a picture with every single person! I thought that was really nice of her. Here is my mug shot:


AFter that hoopla was over, we went back and showered and got ready for our second day of touring. We were headed to Brooklyn Baby!! I loved Brooklyn and quickly proclaimed that if I were to live in NYC, it would be in Brooklyn. Our bus took the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn - here was one of the shots we took:



After we got back from the tour, we had lunch at Brassiere Les Halles, the restaurant our buddy Anthony Bourdain started way back when. It was scrumptious!


After that we walked the Brooklyn Bridge. How freakin' cool is it that you can do that?!


I bought a Brooklyn Bridge t-shirt from an artist selling them. He was a DIY Screen printer and I thought it only appropriate to support a local crafter.

After the Bridge, we headed to City Hall where I pretended to be on Law & Order:


We then headed to Chelsea to tour around. We ended up on Bleeker street - which I belive is the West Village and got another treat at the "real" Magnolia Bakery. We saw a line of people outside this unmarked store. So naturally we got in line, without really knowing why. It turns out it was a store that sold el-cheapo marc by marc jacobs stuff so we got a lot of strange things, namely fingerless gloves that quasi kept our hands warm for the remainder of the trip. We affectionately refer to them as our MJs. Nate has a plain black pair and mine are red & black striped. They will be coming out in future pics.

We had dinner at John's Pizza, which one of our tour guides said was his favorite NYC pizza. It WAS pretty darn good.

And THAT folks, wraps up day #4.

Title of this post is a lyric from Jay-Z's Brooklyn's Finest. I thought it was a great title that somehow fit a Y'all in there from the carrie underwood crazies. Please know that this song is not for all ears. :)

Hell, I still love you, New York

The Travel Recap Continues....

Days 2 & 3: Sunday & Monday in NYC!

We woke up on Sunday and decided to get some food. We had breakfast, toured Grand Central Station (pic below) and the United Nations that morning.

We then had to check out of the Royalton to get to our next hotel, The Empire Hotel. Why wouldn't we stay in one hotel the entire time, you might ask? Simple. We booked both hotels through Travelzoo and neither one had all nights available. I thought it would be a pain, but it was fun to stay in two different hotels. We got to our hotel, near Columbus Circle & Lincoln Center, just in time to see the end of the NY Marathon. Paula Radcliffe is still my hero even if she got 4th. Then it was time to hit up 5th Avenue!

We had wanted to have tea at The Plaza, but the tea room was under construction. Nate took my picture outside of it nonetheless.

After that it was shopping and sightseeing along 5th Avenue. Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral (GORGEOUS), Tiffany, Cartier, etc. We went to Bloomingdales and I was talked into getting red lipstick. I now love red lipstick. After Bloomingdale's we ate at Serendipity. This place was not at all what I thought it would be - and I mean that in a good way. It was very small and very eclectic. We started with a frozen hot chocolate as an appetizer!

After Serendipity, we headed to Manolo Blahnick and MOMA. I did not buy any shoes. When it came down to it, I couldn't really fathom spending $700+ on a pair of shoes. I guess I am just a practical WI girl at heart. Nate was almost begging me to buy shoes but I didn't find "the pair".

We took a short rest in our hotel room - check out our lovely view!


We headed to Carnegie Deli for a pastrami sandwich and matzo ball soup. It was fantastic. After the deli, we headed to the roof of our hotel for a cocktail. I really wanted my picture underneath the neon Hotel Empire sign but it was too big and Nate wasn't about to hang off the side of the roof to get the whole shot. You can quasi see the red lips in this pic :)


After our really expensive cocktails, we decided to get a bottle of wine and head to our room. Well, we walked EVERYWHERE for this stupid bottle of wine and couldn't find any. My brother-in-law told us about a yummy frozen yogurt place, Pinkberry. People, Pinkberry was like the oasis in the desert. I saw it and literally screamed (on the sidewalks of NYC) "PINKBERRYYYYY". Then I got a hold of myself and said to my husband, "Did I really just scream as loud as I think I did?" He confirmed that I had. No matter, Pinkberry was really yummy.

We headed into this convenience store after that and found four bottles of wine. Hoorray! We headed back to our room. We got up to the room and Nate noticed that the alcohol content was really low. It turns out we should have read the label - we had bought wine product, which tasted like really awful grape juice. Sigh. We decided to retire for the evening.

Day 3: Monday
Monday we got up early because we decided that we were going to do one of those bus tours where you ride on the roof. We had heard these were really good, and a good way to see a lot of the sights in a short amount of time. Our first tour was the Uptown tour which took you through Central Park west, past the Dakota (where Lennon was shot and Yoko still resides), Grant's Tomb, up through Harlem & the Apollo Theatre, and down Central Park East past the Guggenheim, The Frick & the Met. Well, our tour guide boarded the bus and starting chanting "Ah-OOOH-Ga, Ah-OOOOH-Ga". Nate and I thought he may have been drunk. In hindsight, we should have just gotten off that bus and boarded another bus. We did not. As you can imagine, there was not a lot of information that we received on this tour besides, "Look at the beautiful leaves. The pretty leaves, Aren't this just Beautiful" and a lot of Shist Jokes - Shist is the rock that Manhattan is on. There are a lot of Shist rocks in Central Park. It also was really really cold on top of that bus!

Luckily, the downtown tours were better. We took the downtown tour through Greenwich Village and got off to meet our friend, PS, who is at NYU. P took us to this fun restaurant, Bar 89, for lunch. CRAZY enough the restaurant is owned by the same people who own Elsa's On the Park right here in MKE! Probably the craziest thing about Bar 89 is the bathroom. It looks like people can see you when you are using the facility, but they really can't. Hard to explain - you'll just have to go and experience it!

After Bar 89, we did some shopping in SoHo. I went to Top Shop. It was here that I realized that NYC sizes are not the same as everywhere else sizes. Welcome to a few sizes bigger. Oh well. TopShop was a fun place. PS also took us to Uniqlo, where I bought lots of leggings and another pair of skinny jeans....again several sizes larger than I normally wear. I LOVED SoHo.

We said goodbye to PS and got back on the bus to go to the World Trade Center site and the financial district. We also went to Century 21, which was a hot mess. We got back on the bus to go through the East Village, Midtown neighborhoods and were dropped off near our hotel. We walked to Ollie's Noodle Shop for dinner, near our hotel. We had dessert at Magnolia Bakery...not the "real one" but the location nearest our hotel on the upper west side. Those cupcakes were phenomenal. We did a little shopping around our hotel - Sabon, Fresh, and Lululemon. We walked back through the Lincoln Center Plaza, which is beautiful at night, and the sight of a celeb sighting and meeting the very next day. Stay Tuned!

Title comes from the Song New York, New York by Ryan Adams, which my roommate CP and I were addicted to back in college. Click here for a listen.

Go Ahead...Bite the Big Apple

We're BAAAACK!

I don't know if one post will entirely capture everything so I will be recapping our eleven day trip to New York City & Philadelphia in the days ahead starting with Day 1.

Oct 31, 2009

We had a 7:30 flight into Manhattan. Upon arrival, we found a driver to take us from La Guardia airport to our hotel. While we were driving to our hotel, I noticed an Asics store poster announcing that Deena Kastor was going to be in the store in 20 minutes! We checked into the swanky Royalton Hotel in Midtown. Unfortunately because we were early our room that we reserved was not ready. "Lemme Lemme Upgrade Upgrade you" was their response - so instead of our standard room we had a fireplace!! Not so unfortunate after all!

We immediately headed to Asics to meet Deena Kastor. She was really nice and signed a personal note on a poster of herself for me.

After meeting Deena, we toured around midtown. New York Library (gorgeous!), Bryant Park, Empire State Building, Mood Fabrics (where they shop on Project Runway), Garment district, Gray's Papaya, NYC Marathon expo, Macy's and so forth. THANK GOD I had my Clark's on because it was a ton of walking. That night we had tickets to West Side Story in Times Square. We ate at Scarlatto which was muy tasty. After eating, we had some time to kill so we sat on the red TKTS steps and watched the crazy Halloween costumes. Crazy enough, there was a couple sitting ahead of us that took the following picture and they were not only from Wisconsin, but were on our same flight from MKE! What are the chances of that happening!

After the people watching, we headed in to the theatre for the show. Oh my lord, West Side Story was AMAZING. I was convinced I was going to be singing those songs all week. It was updated from the original to contain more Spanish, which we both thought seemed more natural that the Sharks would be speaking more Spanish. And oh the dancing....

We returned to the hotel where there were velvet ropes blocking the entrance. Apparently one happening Halloween Party occurs in the lobby. We stayed for approximately 5 minutes and then went up to bed. If the Clarks shoes didn't make me old, this did. :)

And just like that, Day 1 was over!

Title of this post comes from Shattered by the Rolling Stones. Click here for a listen

"I want to be a part of it - new york, new york"

Nate woke up and started singing New York, New York today. I thought I would barely make it through my last day of work, but here it is...almost 4:30!

Only 15 hours until take-off time!

Photo Source: Naumachos_1963 via Flickr

Photo of my Napkin Rings

Coyotes ARE Dangerous!

Remember my coyote story from Phoenix?

Well my sister just emailed me this story.

I guess I had a reason to be afraid! ha ha ha