NYC

This weekend Victor and I left the kids for 48 hours with my parents.  We spent the "weekend" by ourselves in NYC.  It was wonderful.  I really felt like we were truly on vacation for the first time since having kids. Ahh! 

We were very busy but relaxed.  Thursday morning we left our house at 6 AM, flew from DCA to JFK, and were checked in our hotel by 10:45 AM.  We spent the morning/early afternoon walking from our hotel (94th street) to the top edge of Central park (110th St) all the way to Times Square (40th Street).   Approximately 90 blocks, plus some unaccounted for wandering.

I had been in Central Park before but never really spent any time exploring it.  We stopped at all the sights this time.  It was a beautiful day and now I can say I have seen every attraction in Central Park (except for the zoo)! 

We ate lunch at an excellent restuarant owned by chef Todd English, located in the Plaza Hotel.  Everything was great but I can still taste the carmelized brussel sprouts.  Yum!! 

We spent the late afternoon/early evening in Times Square.  We ate a piece of NYC cheesecake at Roxy's.  We finished out the day at Top of the Rock.  Victor suggested we walk back to the hotel.  Ha!  No thanks! 

Friday we walked over to "the" shopping district and updated our wardrobes a bit.  Fun!  Then we took a cab to Wall Street.  We saw a small group of protesters marching and visited the 9/11 memorial.  We then walked over to China town and ate dinner.  I found my two favorites -- red bean cakes and pork sticky buns.  I asked a Chinese shopkeeper where I could find those and she told me where to find them but suggested neither of them were really Chinese.  I found a new favorite food as well - green tea coconut cakes.

Friday night we saw the Tony Award winning show, "War Horse."  It was a play based on WWI.  During that war the soldiers rode horses during battles.  Apparently 10 million horses and 8 million soldiers died during WWI.  Unimaginable to me.  I just pray there are no major wars during my lifetime or my kids.  It must have been so awful.  The play was fantastic and the horse "puppets" were amazing.  You truly could almost forget they weren't real. 

We got back to the hotel around 11pm that night and were up at 5 AM to get ready for the airport on Saturday. 

Erik, Lainey and Carson had a great time with Grandma and Papa.  When I asked them today if they missed us I got a very affirmative, "NO" as an answer.   Good thing there were two of them to take on the trio as sleep was fairly limited while we were gone.  Ha!  Photos to come in the next post.