New York Day 4

We had a great trip to New York, and even though my feet and back hurt pretty much the entire time, I was sort of sad for it to come to an end.  But... I was missing my kids and I was really looking forward to soak in the tub when I got home too, so I think we timed it right.

That morning we got packed up and left our suitcases with the front desk and headed to Brooklyn.  We kind of changed our original plans and Jessica was still able to find us a fun, local place to eat.  We went to Milk Bar, another quirky, pretty local and mostly organic and healthy-ish place.  I had never been to Brooklyn, and it was very different from the city.  It was also a Sunday, so I'm sure it looks different during the week, but there were a ton of kids and strollers and families out.  It was a nice change.  We even got a bit of sun, since we weren't surrounded by the tall buildings the entire time.

We went to the Brooklyn Park, took pictures, watched people for a few minutes and then walked up the Brooklyn Bridge.  We had planned to walk across it, or bike across it, but we realized we wanted to eat lunch on the Brooklyn side, and didn't have a ton of time, so we walked up a bit, took more pictures, and walked back.

Lunch was at Grimaldi's, the original.  I guess there is some debate on whether or not it's the original (owner disputes and a fire at the original site) but it was close enough.  Gordon wasn't sure he wanted to wait, I think we were just a little worried about getting back to the city, back to our hotel and to the airport on time.  But, the wait ended up only being about 45 minutes for a table and they were really quick once we were there.  The pizza was delicious, much better than Lombardi's.  It was worth the wait (especially since we ended up making our flight).

After lunch we headed back to city, caught a bus back to our hotel in Jersey and waited for a cab.  We amazingly were down to our last $40 or $50 dollars between what Gordon and I had brought (it amazes me how many places only take cash, but I guess you just get used to it if you live in New York, you always need cash -and a lot of it).  We requested a cab that would take a card.  A guy showed up in a town car (fancy) but forgot he needed gas.  So we had to stop with him and then when we got to the airport he said he only took cash.  We were pretty annoyed and Justin had to run in the airport in search for an ATM.  The guy was finally paid and we were on our way.

The flight home was direct and even got in 20 minutes early.  I was kind of sad because the kids were staying at Lisa's house, but we got to see them first thing the next morning.  I got the best smile from Kate and you could tell both kids were glad to have us home.

New York Day 3

This was supposed to be an early day.  But, we realized every day was an early day, and we opted to get breakfast quickly (either a street stand or something from the bus depot) so we didn't wake up earlier than usual (and we also didn't wake up any later).  One day I'll go to New York when I'm rich and have plenty of time on my hands with girlfriends.  We'll sleep in, get a spa service, go out for the afternoon to shop and have a nice dinner, and then repeat for several days.  Someday.

Anyway... breakfast was quick and then we went to the Manhattan Temple.  Pretty cool.  It was super small and had at least 3 floors from what we could tell (maybe it was only two).  To save ourselves a little time (and because it was Gordon and Jessica's anniversary week) we did sealings.  Always a good experience.  We didn't do too many, but we did help another couple seal some of their family, including sons.  We also went and spent a few minutes in the Celestial room as well.  Very small and simple, kind of reminded me of the London temple, but smaller.

We caught a bit of luck with our lunch and snack agenda that day (we started wondering if we should have started every day with a stop in at the temple.  For once... our meal and snacks were on our way to our next destination, not busy, and also a bit on the cheaper side.  Lunch was at Gray Papaya's.  A hot dog place with good hot dogs (can you get a really great hot dog without it being some kind of sausage or bratwurst?? A hot dot is sort of just a hot dog) and a whole variety of fresh juices.  I think Justin and Jessica liked there's a lot, Gordon and I ended up getting Pina Colada and I think we got the end of the barrel.  It was kind of pulpy and not too cold, but we tasted Jessica's (who got the same thing) and it was much better.

Just another block or two up from lunch was our snack place.  Levain's bakery.  I'm not much of a foodie.  I like to eat food that tastes good, and I have a few favorites from a few different places and things I make.  But this cookie??? I swear to you, I will go to my grave and never find a better tasting cookie.  I can't stress how serious I am.  It wasn't even just the flavor of cookie, which was Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter, and it was delicious, but I'm sure that there is at least 2/3 cup of dough that goes in to each cookie.  And it was cooked so perfect, a bit hard on the outside -without being burnt- and completely done on the inside, but since it was so big it almost had the texture or feel of the dough.  It's hard to explain, but trust me, if you're EVER in New York and regardless of how out-of-the-way it would be for you to stop by Levain's bakery in the Upper West Side, do yourself a favor.  Stop and get a cookie.  Or two.  I just got on their website and noticed that they ship.  That could be a problem.

After the cookie experience, we made our way to Broadway.  We had a hard time choosing which show to see, and would have been happy with a lot of them, I'm sure.  But, we went and saw the musical Once.  We all loved it.  It was pretty much the first professional theatre experience for Gordon and Jess.  I know Gordon saw Phantom of the Opera with our family in San Francisco, but he may have blocked it out of his memory for some reason.  It was a small-ish theatre and our seats were decent.  You could hear and see everything.  The story is made up of a bunch of musicians, so the talent on that little stage was incredible.   Each person could sing (of course), and they each played at least one other instrument -piano, accordian, guitar, banjo, cello, violin, etc.  It was great music and a great story.  Even for a love story -which I wasn't too thrilled at.  It was a movie first (came out in 2007 and was an Official selection at Sundance, so I how I missed it, I'm not sure), and I was actually familiar with the main song from my cousin Annie on her blog a few years ago.  One other unique part was the stage was essentially set up like a bar, so before and during intermission they actually opened it up and could you get a drink and snacks right on the stage.  Pretty cool.

While walking back from the show we had our second of two celebrity sightings.  The first one really only counted for Jessica, since the other three of us had no idea who the guy was (she didn't until she got home and looked it up) and doubted the entire time that he was any kind of celebrity.  But, we were about 2 feet away from Rizzo from Grease (Stockard Channing) currently appearing in Memphis, which is where she was standing.  Right after that we noticed a commotion on 5th ave and stopped to gawk.  They were clearing everyone off the street for a block or two and we could see a filming car at the far end.  We watched two cars race by and I asked one of the security-type guys what they were doing.  He said they were just filming an Altima commericial.  I told him he could have told us it was a celebrity in the car and we would have believed him, so he said that Will Smith was in the car and they were doing a movie.  A bunch of people around us heard and thought that's what they were really doing.  Pretty cool either way, I guess.

We made the trek up to Tiffany & Co on 5th.  I had been saving my birthday and even some Christmas money to buy something.  Pretty much anything from there on this trip.  I walked out empty handed.  Maybe  on that fictional future trip with my girlfriends I'll bring something shiny home.

I believe after that we made our way to dinner in the West Village at Westville.  It was a super small, very local and organic restaurant.  We lucked out again and only had to wait for a few minutes for a table, which was nice since there was only about 7 or 8 tables in the place.  I guess it pays to eat like Utahns (dinner around 6 instead of 9) because I'm sure places got even busier the later it was.

We made our way to the Empire State Building, but not before getting a shake at Stand4 and walking through Union Square for a bit.  Not to over-shadow the cookie I had earlier, but I'm a fan of mint and cookies and cream, and I will almost always get some kind of variation of that whenever I order shakes.  Which, is what I got at Stand4. (A really cool-looking and upscale hamburger place, I'm sure it had good food too).  Best mint cookies and cream shake ever.  Gordon got the same thing (do you notice a pattern?) and he agreed he'd never had one quite like it.  It was with the mint, and I'm not sure why it was so good.  Maybe it was spearmint instead of peppermint?  Or maybe it was fresh mint, what ever kind it was, but it hit your taste buds in a different place and then after you swallowed you got the taste of mint again.  Delicious.

We didn't stay in Union Square long.  Long enough to watch some chess players, notice a passed out guy and his vomit on the side of him and for me to get hit by a football.  Just your regular stuff at Union Square I think.  We also saw some cool street-preforming-type guys making huge bubbles out of two sticks with string between them.

I'd like to forget most of the next 3 hours (Justin said it was two, but I think it was closer to two and half or more).  We decided to go up the Empire State building at night.  Here's a tip for any of you future travelers out there.  I like the idea of going up one of the buildings (between Empire and 30Rock) at night and one during the day, you get a different view of the city.  However, avoid all the romantic's out there, and do 30 Rock at night.  We waited over 2 hours in line.  When I went up in 2005, there was no line.  None.  We may have waited for the elevator to open for us and it is possible we waited for one or two elevators to go down, but no line.  This was unreal.  And, just when you thought you were through with the line, there was a turn or another escalator, and it was another line.  The guys had been in dress shoes all day and Gordon had about had enough.  I had abandoned my 'comfy' shoes earlier and was in souvenir flip flops and I'll blame the extra pounds in my front, because my back was killing me.  Anyway... other than being stuck in a large group of high school kids (including one that had body odor so bad it was unreal) and a french lady standing behind us that could not stop 'inching' her way in front of us... we found ways to entertain ourselves.  However, it had been just Justin and I there is NO WAY I would have stood in line, and I'm not sure what Gordon would have done, but we did it.  Got our pictures and got back in line to go back down as soon as we could.

On our way back to the subway/bus terminal we walked up to Times Square so Gordon and Jess could see it at night too.  It was a long day and I was sure that my feet wouldn't fully recover in the 6 hours we had back in our hotel before we started our next day.  And I was mostly right.

New York Day 2

It was a miracle... but in the 6 or so hours we spent at the hotel, the swelling went down on my feet and I could walk again!  This time both Gordon and I wore our regular Soloman shoes, meant for some serious walking -and bike riding. 

Breakfast was at Sarabeth's, across the street from Central Park.  Good food, and nice atmosphere.  From there we walked a couple of blocks to pick up the bike's we reserved.  Biking through Central Park is an awesome way to see it.  Not only was it nice to be biking instead of walking for a bit, but we got to see a lot more of the park than we would have been able to in a short amount of time.  It took a minute to two to figure out where we could bike and where we couldn't, but once we had that figured out, we were off. 
Stopped at Bethesda fountain and walked for a bit, and again when we got to the big resevoir and Strawberry fields.  We spent two hours biking (including Gordon and Jessica's brave ride up a couple of blocks back in the city (Justin and I opted to walk our bikes back) and went to the Museum of Natural History. 

I noticed when we went to Washington DC that it's hard to see all or even most of the museums in the short amount of time you have. We saw nearly all of the main exhibits, I think we all liked the Ocean one the best.

Lunch was right around the corner from the museum at Shake Shack.  Very good hamburgers and shakes and we ate it on a park bench nearby.

If I remember right, we also walked around the Financial District (I can't remember why we never went to the Bull) and saw the New York Stock Exchange and the NY Public Library.  We also walked into Chinatown and Little Italy and had an interesting bathroom experience at the McDonalds.  I guess it wasn't that interesting, just the longest wait we had for the restrooms in a very crowded McDonalds.  We saw Grand Central Station and went to dinner at Lombardis.  We ordered a large pizza but split in two, the first one I ate made me start to doubt the deliciousness of New York pizza -and it was their specialty too.  It just wasn't great and the crust was a little burnt.  The second half we put garlic sauteed spinach and homemade meatballs.  Much better.

We also went up to the Top of the Rock (Justin and I made sure we took our city pass the rest of the trip) and saw the view from up there.

New York -Day 1

Okay... here goes the trip re-cap.  There will be a lot of pictures, very little with me in them and a surprisingly number of food.  I may not get super detailed, because I'm planning on a creating a book just for the trip, but I'm sure I'll get most of it in.

Technically the first day was Wednesday, May 16th.  However, it was spent dropping kids off, finishing packing, flying, lay over's and a taxi to the hotel in New Jersey.  So, we'll skip that day.

Justin was in charge of transportation and the general sight-seeing operation of the trip.  Jessica was put in charge of food.  Gordon and I had to smile in pictures and make sure we didn't spend too much money.  We all stuck to our assigned roles for the most part.  Gordon and I may have stopped smiling near the end, and we started suggesting Justin and Jessica pose for pictures, since they had a bit more energy and camera-ready smiles.

Thursday morning we started off bright and early (just like every day) and caught a bus into the city and bought our Metro cards.  Well-used metro cards by the end of the fourth day. The first stop was breakfast and since we had fresh feet and slightly misjudged the distance, we walked a little over a mile to get there from the bus terminal.  It was called The Cafeteria in midtown.  Our waiter teased Gordon just to the point of annoyance about it being his anniversary and he forgot to put my order in, but other than that it was a fun place to eat and the food was good.

 From there we went to Rockefeller Center.  This is where Justin and I realized we didn't bring our City Passes, which had the pre-paid tickets to the Top of the Rock and the Ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty.  Oops.  We adjusted the schedule a bit, took a few pictures and went on to the next attraction.  I think this is where we stopped in to St. Patrick's Cathedral, probably passed by Radio City Hall and Time's Square for the first of many times, and headed towards lunch.

Lunch was at Norma's, inside a hotel.  I think if I was voting... this was probably my best meal.  There were a couple of close seconds, but we were all pretty impressed with this place.  Kind of fancy, but we didn't feel out of place or anything.  I had the best steak fajita's I've ever had -and the best part was it didn't come out in a screaming hot, loud skillet.  Jessica had the best french toast I've ever seen and tasted and Gordon said he really liked his fish taco's.  Plus, they gave Jes individually sealed bottles of real organic maple syrup -and she only needed one so she took the other.  First souvenir of the trip!

From there we made our way towards Battery Park, stopping at FAO Schwarz and the giant piano.  We were all planning on going to the Statue of Liberty and stopping at Ellis Island, but these were also tickets that Justin and I had already paid for and left back at the hotel.  We were just going to buy new ones, but while standing in line we realized we really didn't need to see that all again and told Jes and Gordon to go on without us.  Good thing we did, because they ended up getting on the last ferry to go out there (there was no way we would have got through the line in time) so they were able to see the Statue of Liberty.  Justin and I made a 'quick' trip up to see a Naval Air Craft Carrier which currently has the Space Shuttle on board.  However, we were still orienting ourselves to getting around again, and we misjudged how for and how long it would take to get there, so we didn't go on the tour.

We had timed tickets to go to the 9/11 memorial at 7.  We started waiting in line/security at about 6:30 and probably got into the memorial right at 7.  It was incredible.  I'd seen pictures and even video of the two pools, but they were beyond anything I had thought they would look like.  Justin had printed off names for each of us (with our own first names) and we found each of them.  There was also the 'survivor' tree in the park, the only tree that survived the September 11th attacks, was nursed back to health in a city park, was uprooted again in a storm, and surivived again to be planted in the memorial. 

From there we walked to dinner.  This time at Bubby's, a BBQ place known for their pies.  We didn't get a pie, but we all enjoyed our meal.  By this time my feet were in pretty bad shape, I had bought a couple of new shoes for the trip -and I had even broken them in and thought they'd be great.  They were NOT.  My feet were raw and I was in a LOT of pain at this point.  In fact, in the basement of the place they had an old fashioned photo booth and I nearly killed Justin because he made me go down there and back up just for pictures.

Jessica did such a great job on the food agenda that she also included snacks.  We kept forgetting about the snacks and desserts (mostly because we were always so full after every meal) that we tried to get to one after dinner.  Justin kept telling me we could get a cab for the mile or so walk (or hobble, in my case) we were going to walk to SoHo, but I was determined to tough it out.  And I did.  We went to Rice to Riches, which is rice pudding but with all sorts of flavors, similar to an ice cream place.  It was delicious, and they served them in these cool little bowls that you got to keep, I was a fan.  Just about worth the limping a mile to get there!  They also had a ton of funny signage in the place too.

We finally made it back to the hotel and I iced my feet before bed.  We survived our first full day in New York and were excited for the next three.

In the meantime

This rarely happens, but I have 3 (and will soon have a couple more) posts sitting in draft that I'm working on.  One is sort of a book review (I explain it more in the post) and the other is our New York trip by days.  Waiting for pictures.  I've finished uploading my camera and saving mine and Justin's instagram photos'... but we're still waiting on Jessica to upload all of hers.  And, she has a LOT, I'm sure.  Thanks to Jess, we have a nice record of what we did and what we (or at least she) ate.





So... just in case you read this and don't follow me on facebook and instagram, we're still here.  Justin is currently traveling for work, Hyrum is still playing t-ball, and Kate and I are along for the ride.  The baby is more than half-way done, and I'm feeling every increase in temperature.

The week before Mother's Day my sister-in-law Shondel offered to try and get a few pictures of our kids.  True to form, they didn't want to cooperate.  We managed a couple good ones of Hyrum, but Kate refused to crack a smile.  We thought for a second we'd try to get the four of them together... but could tell that was a no-go from the beginning.