I often found myself asking that question. People in NY are ooc and so are their rules. Everytime I visit I have a good time, but am always certain that I could never live there!
Anyways, this trip was Sketchy and my graduation present to Brenna. I made her a ghetto card with pictures and such "voucher style" listing things that we could do.
We ended up with this list of items to try to get through:
S'mac
Juniors
broadway play
empire state building
1942 wine bar
central park rowboats
possible snack-picnic
loeb's boathouse restaurant for drink
la marina for dinner
We made some spontaneous changes to the schedule but ended up being pretty successful. The voucher was technically for 2 activities and lunch and dinner (we did at least those four things PLUS MORE)
What we did:
NYC Bagels/Chicken Salad Sandwich for breakfast
got tickets for and watched Once (winner of best musical and a shitton of other awards)
s'mac for lunch
empire state building
oscar de la renta sample sale (this took up some time and took away daylight from our central park rowboat/loeb's boat house drinks plan)
1942 wine bar (this ended up being OOC large amount of wine and drinks so we didn't make it to la marina for dinner)
concrete picnic (cart food and wine as we waited in line for our bus back to DC)
Pictures:
we started off our day by heading to broadway and getting in line for tickets to Once.
here was a line across the street at around 8am. box offices open around 10. Don't remember what show that was but ooc.
here was our line. it got pretty long around 9. We were in line from around 7:30am.
I liked the doors with one word each about the play.
it was truly a great play. I loved the female character. she was hilariously inappropriate. I kinda want to watch the movie now.
While waiting in line, i ran down the street to grab breakfast. Bagel for Brenna, a chicken salad sandwich for me (i always have to have a deli chicken salad sandwich when in NYC). I was so hungry, i seriously forgot to take a picture before eating it all.
After we successfully purchased tickets, we headed out to S'mac -- a mac and cheese chain which has a ridiculous menu of every kind of mac and cheese combo ever!
It was many many blocks away so we took the subway which Brenna was hesitant about. I'd say we were pretty good about getting to the right place in a decent amount of time via subway. We only missed our stop once.
picture of brenna in subway but also was trying to get a picture of this crazy girl wearing that scarf/shawl thing way in the back -- she was making us SO HOT just looking at her. and she was also dying of heat... dumb decisions.
Once we got off the subway, one stop too far we ended up having quite the walk to s'mac still. We passed this jewel on the way:
if this was post broadway play, we totally would have went in and had a few dozen shots. need to save this picture for future refs. a peak into the bar led me to believe that this was the 'nyc bottomline.'
We finally got to s'mac exactly at 11 only to realize that it might not be open that early, but we were in luck. Opened at 11!
excited about opening time.
brenna got a 'make your own' with greens and chicken.
i got the buffalo chicken mac and cheese.
it was still bubbling and was soooo good. this was also a 'small' which is ooc because it was really filling.
After our second meal we headed to the empire state building. I had bought tickets ahead of time but we still had to pick the tickets up from will call. There was a slight line after the first elevator. The attendant said it would take 25 minutes to get into the second elevator or we could use the staircase. We didn't really have 25 minutes to kill since Once was on at 2 and it was already 1 o clock. We decided to take the stairs and unfortunately were the closest people to the stairway so we ended up leading the pack. I felt bad being in front and felt like i had to move faster which was a BAD IDEA. i was DYING by the third story. also it was def not six stories -- more like EIGHT. Halfway through Brenna started singing bon jovi "we're half way there ooohhh, we'll make it i swear..." i found it amusing but i'm not sure that the rest of the people behind us cared lol. They were probably trying to catch their breath as well.
central park beyond the buildings
crystler building. think it's so pretty.
was difficult to take pictures with the views. stupid bars.
After the empire state building, we decided we'd cab to Once since there wasn't much time left. Every time I've needed a cab in nyc I've had no trouble -- maybe because i've gone on weekends and this was a wednesday afternoon? There were seriously hundreds of cabs, and every single one of them had a person in it. It took us about 15 minutes to catch a cab and then we were stuck in traffic for a few blocks which took forever. We ended up making it JUST on time for the show. We were able to watch the cast play about two songs (they just had a jam session) before the play began.
The show was really good. Lucky to have watched a really amazing play for my first broadway play. Also, can cross that off the list! Making good progress on the life list.
After the show, we headed to an Oscar De La Renta sample sale. Brenna's cousin does finance there and was able to get us into the invite only sale for friends and family! Learned interesting things at the sale. Sizes were of course very tiny, but oscar de la renta makes home goods like coffee cups and dishware. Brenna bought two very brenna-esque forks (they had branch like stems).
I found many boxes of shoes which excited me. I then realized that there were only two sizes (13 and 6). For me and my baby feet this was fantastic. For everyone else, not so much. Basically, the designers make size 13 shoes for the models since they tend to be tall girls with larger feet and size 6 for the displays! I love the juxtaposition there of what looks good when. Anyways, I found amazing black pumps which are so very practical. They were so comfortable and great. After much debate i got them! These were 500.00+ shoes that i got for 40.00. I'd say it was too good of a deal to pass up esp because they were actually comfortable and perfect!
I also got Sapna a belt. They had lots of belts for a good deal as well (20.00 i think?):
got her the top left gold belt. The buckle also slides off so you can add the belt to any other belt you might have that will fit it!
While there weren't that many people there, the sample sale really got cleaned out:
this was the purse display a couple hours before closing.
This was a really neat spontaneous thing we got to do which made it okay not to do central park row boats and loeb's boathouse (we can always do those things the next time we go!)
After the sale, we headed off to 1742 Wine Bar. This was a fantastic place and such a great deal. They were running a special:
50.00 a person. Each person got 3 red wines, 3 white wines, an appetizer with meats and cheeses, an entree and the couple got a bottle to take home (180 value)! Ridiculous deal.
i loved the build in shelves at the bar.
these glasses were pretty good size. this was probably the smallest glass we got. I couldn't believe we EACH got flights of red and white.
brenna's misleading salad looking meal
which actually hid a very large fried chicken breast beneath
my chicken cream pasta situation
afterwards we cabbed to another wine bar i had read about only to find out that their system was down and they were closing. no fear we ended up going into the next bar (st. andrew's in the background) for a drink.
then we headed to the bus where there were many many nypd cars.
here's the food cart we got food from. well really this is just the fridge part that brenna sneakily put our bottle of wine in to keep it chilled. lol
then we had a concrete picnic in line for the bus. Here's brenna and the bottle of wine and her oscar de la renta forks.
rando picture -- they have these crazy car guards it looks like for parallel parking bumping? was interesting.
we walked by times square at least 5 times that day.
Successful day and we have things we'd like to do next time we go back! Central park row boats, loeb's boathouse and la marina!
