Wednesday, May 11, 2011

New York in Spring

I dropped a bomb on most of you by posting a rather cryptic photo and then taking off for a little vacation.  Whoops.  At least I was amused:-)

I'll give you my impressions on the shows as individual entries because, let's face it, they all deserve exclusive attention.

In the mean time, you all want to know what consumed my days.  Is "Bliss" a good enough answer?  No?  Okay, fine.  I'll be brief.

Thursday morning we peeked our heads above the subway around 7:15am, left our bags at our hotel, and headed for Alice's Teacup. Unfortunately, they don't rise as early as we do, so we walked up to the Natural History Museum and back waiting for 8am.  I enjoyed blueberry pancakes and pretending to drink tea for a photo op.  Off we went to the Harry Potter Exhibition for a fulfillment of one of Megan's dreams and to fill some time before we were allowed to check-in to our hotel.  We walked around, picked up sandwiches at Pret A Manger, visited 30 Rock, were given standy-by tickets to Jimmy Fallon (but were too napping to attend), and finally hit the hotel for nap-time after I induced a sugar coma with Magnolia Bakery's banana pudding.  We awoke just in time to prettify ourselves and hit up the Marriott Marquis for Wonderland.

Who pretends to drink tea for a cute photo?  Oh yeah...

You'd be shocked how difficult it is to find an English-speaking person in Times Square to take your photo

Friday morning I drug the girls to the Grand Central Terminal, then to my favorite jewelry store with Tiffany's "inspired" style - I bought myself a lil gem and they souvenired like crazy.  I also showed them the wooden escalators at Macy's and where Santa resides!  We wouldn't be in NYC, if I didn't make the traditional trip to Serendipity/Patsy's/Dylan's Candy Bar.  Megan's friend, Kristen, met up with us and the two of them chattered like jolly chipmunks over drool-inducing white pizza.  Mmmmm.


We attempted to then walk-off the goods with a trip to China town, but the efforts to battle off a food coma are indeed futile.  Our trip to China town was also bust -  you have to go into the scary back rooms to get anything good these days.  The evening hours found us at the Roxy store to buy one of my favorite hoodies (I guess the other ladies agreed cause they each bought one too!) and then off to Catch Me If You Can.  Our Utah-time'd bellies then thought it was time for dinner, so we hit up StarDust Diner, where the waiters and waitresses sing and dance whilst serving.

Grand Central Station Terminal
Saturday I may or may not have made a pregnant Keri walk 16 miles.  And you know what?  She is a TIGER!  I thoroughly wiped her out on walking for the rest of the trip, but how many women do you know who are 7-months pregnant, heck, not pregnant at all, who can walk 16 miles? 




We did most of the walking around the entire perimeter and throughout the inside of Central Park while Megan and her brother, Aaron, went to see Billy Elliot.  I can't forget to mention the shake-you-in-your-shoes deliciousness of Shake Shack we experienced for lunch.  If you go to NYC and you even remotely like burgers, fries, and shakes, you must go and eat all of them! Life with no regrets!  Speaking of no regrets, we actually dished out the big bucks for our tickets to How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying starring John Larroquette and Daniel Radcliffe.  W-O-W.


Pre-theater we enjoyed an Italian meal in cozy little place by our hotel -Radicchio- with seating for 16 - quaint, perfect portions, and perfect taste.  Post-theater we went clubbing.  No, you did not read incorrectly.  Keri is in an 80s cover band, Channel Z, and wanted to check out a group touted to be one of New York's best - Rubix Kube at the Canal Room.  Aaron knew how to get us right up in front of the band, so we weaved our way there for about an hour and a half and then our worn-out bodies pleaded with us to depart.  We obeyed.


Sunday we found ourselves back at Alice's Teacup for Mother's Day brunch.  Scones, glorious scones.  I'm not talking fried nastiness - I am talking English yumfest.  Then back to Central Park to see the Boat House, Bethesda Terrace, and more.   Megan had to bid a fond farewell to her darling brother as we made our way to Anything GoesSutton Foster, please!  In case anyone doesn't know, she's one of my favorites.  I have never met her and was able to talk the other ladies into waiting at the stage door with me, but no luck:-(  We hungrily headed towards our hotel to an Indian Place - Bombay Bistro.  After all the "tour nazi" torture I'd been putting the ladies through, we decided to stay in for the evening to rest and watch Adjustment Bureau.

Alice's Teacup Curious French Toast



Monday morning whilst Keri and Megan enjoyed breakfast at our hotel, I scarfed a Lemon-glazed poppyseed muffing from Magnolia and briskly walked to the East shore of the island to a park with a lovely view of the Queensboro Bridge and the United Nations buildings.  Despite being worn to the bone, I was able to convince Keri and Megan to accompany me to a new adventure for me - The Highline - an elevated railway system not in use since the 80s which has been converted into an elevated park on the island's west side.  Next, we asked ourselves, "What is a trip to NY without seeing the Brooklyn Bridge?"  Another of my favorite locations in the city is the South Street Seaport area - off we went! Boarding the subway back towards Times Square, my heart sunk a little, realizing this was my last adventure in NYC for another year.  I thought we had ended our time there successfully, with Keri finding the purse she wanted and Megan getting her photos in the Barbie house, but ends up there was an incident at JFK where Megan's Crumbs Cupcakes fell frosting-side-down on the ladies' room floor - you can read about it here.

Queensboro Bridge
UN Buildings
The Highline
Brooklyn Bridge
Megan sadly staring at Keri's muffin post bathroom incident


I arrived back in SLC with an NYC sandwich, Crumbs cupcake, and Magnolia lemon muffin in tow for my "last" NYC supper.  The entire plane ride I kept falling asleep, then waking up with a jerk all worried that we were not going to have enough time to see what we wanted, or we had to be to the subway by a certain time, or we were almost late for our show, etc.

Am I glad to be home?  Do you really need to ask?

5 comments:

S.R. Braddy said...

Larissa + Flowers = d'AAAAAAWWWWW!

Shayla said...

Yay!!!! The jealousy is just EEPING out of me right now. Yes, EEPING.

Miss Megan said...

I'm planning on linking to your blog for the play-by-play... hope you don't mind!

Sheesh, that was a fun trip. You are a terrific tour guide and chooser of plays, Larissa. Thanks for everything!

Larissa said...

Megs, darling, you can link to my blog whenever you want. Please do, actually! :-)
And, since I did a play-by-play, you can just do a bunch of individual entries about the events you enjoyed most.

Stephen, glad you thought those flower photos were as adorable as I did! I make myself sick sometimes... :-)

Shayla, Eep away:-)

Kristie said...

So I was there two days ago. Haha. I saw Catch Me if You Can too! I loved it! And Frank Abagnale was there for a Q&A after! So rad! I'll have a post about my trip up tomorrow! And we went to Chinatown and into one of those scary back rooms. The cops showed up and we had to hide in a dark hallway. Haha. Worth it!