New York City Trip

We had a fabulous time in New York City! I’ll be honest, I was a little concerned how I would do there considering how claustrophobic I am and how I hate crowds – but I loved every minute of that city. The weather couldn’t have been better. It was upper 80’s every day except today, but we left so it didn’t matter. I started to really miss Jack on Tuesday night and was ready to come home and glad we had an early afternoon flight. Here is a brief summary of what we did:

SUNDAY

• Arrived in NYC at about 10 AM – 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Our town car was there ready to pick us up (a town car was only 28 bucks, compared to a 45 dollar taxi ride)
• Checked into our hotel – room was ready right away. The hotel was 45 stories high and huge, we were on the 17th floor. It was a great hotel – but it was so busy. The location was right in the center of Times Square and we had a great view
• Went to lunch with our Omaha friends at an Irish Pub
• Walked to central park (so big and so much fun)
• Walked to the Metropolitan Art Museum and walked around inside for a while
• Walked back to our hotel
• Rested and then ventured over to Rockefeller Center
• Had the AXA buffet dinner
• Went out to a few bars and got home about 1 AM and we saw Jose Reyes on the street, he’s a baseball player for the NY Mets. Apparently Tom says that he’s a big deal, I’ve never heard of him

MONDAY

• Went out to lunch at Spotted Pig in SoHo. This was such a cute little restaurant, I loved it
• Walked all around the financial district – Wall Street, New York Stock Exchange, Trinity Church, took a picture with the big bull
• Went to Battery Park – opted out of the statue of Liberty ferry, we didn’t really have enough time
• Saw Ground Zero
• Took a subway back to the hotel
• Did some shopping at Anthropology and Banana Republic
• Went out to dinner at Mesa Grill – the Bobby Flay restaurant. This place was really good, but to be honest I wish we would have spent the money on a show instead of dinner. Oh well, live and learn. We had great company!
• Called it an early night

TUESDAY

• Went to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum – this was expensive, but SO much fun! We took so many pictures and had a blast!
• Had a nice lunch at this little sandwich shop
• Walked around Rockefeller Center more – went in the NBC building, saw Brian Williams (the NBC nightly news guy) in J Crew, and went to a few other shops down there!
• AXA Awards Dinner and awards presentation
• Another guy named Tom from AXA who works out of South Dakota was the biggest award winner of the night. He invited some people from MN and Omaha to his penthouse on the 44th floor after the dinner and it was HUGE! It even had a Grand Piano in it too, just like the movies

And we left on Wednesday. What a great trip. The few things I would do next time are go to the Today show, see a show (the show times didn’t work out for us), and maybe see Letterman or some other live taping in the area. I’m not gonna lie, I was a little (OK a lot) scared when I heard about the plane flying right by the buildings and making people evacuate. And I won’t even tell you what went through my head when I heard over 20 cases of suspected Swine Flu had been diagnosed right in NYC. HA! We are safe and sound now back at home and feeling great :-)

Pictures to follow