Reminiscing....

My best friend, LeighAnn, recently had a birthday...and her awesome husband surprised her with a trip this spring to her favorite city (and mine!) New York!! The last time he surprised her with a trip to "the city" (our affectionate name for it) was Christmas of 2006 when he collaborated with my husband for a joint gift. They sent the both of us for a weekend trip....GIRLS ONLY! It was fabulous! I can't believe our weekend was 2 years ago this week! We had a wonderful time and had a great getaway. I posted a blog about it on my myspace page shortly after we returned....so, seeing as it's the anniversary of our trip, (and in honor of LeighAnn's upcoming trip) I thought I'd repost my blog detailing our trip. Enjoy!! :) [By the way, Leigh...I think it's time for another girls only trip!!]

So...you all know that LeighAnn and I took a trip to NYC this past weekend courtesy of the sweetest husbands on earth. I just thought I'd "spill the beans" on our trip. (Don't worry LeighAnn...I won't spill all of them!!)

So, we left for New York early Thursday morning -- earlier than we had planned because Delta cancelled our original flight! OH NO! We were able to secure seats on the flight that left an hour earlier than our original flight. So, despite some pretty heavy turbulence about half-way through we made it to NYC by about 11:00 or so. We took a cab to our hotel and seeing as how check-in isn't until 3 and it's wasn't even noon yet, our room wasn't ready. We stayed at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square and fortunately for us, they had a baggage holding area so we didn't have to hold on to our luggage for 4 hours!

Since we had to wait to "check-in" officially, we decided to walk down to Grand Central Station for lunch. We ate at Juniors and then went to "stand-by" at Rachael Ray....sadly, there were no tickets available. They even turned away people that had tickets!! Apparently, they overbook to ensure a full audience. So...after freezing while standing in line for about an hour, we warmed up w/coffee at Starbucks and then headed back towards the hotel. We were finally able to check-in (our room was on the 42nd floor with a partial view of Times Square). We shopped for a while in Times Square until it was time for dinner (at Carmines! -- they have delicious Chicken Parm.) and then of to Mary Poppins -- which was PHENOMENAL!!!! I was very impressed w/the show! It is definitely one I could see again and again!

On Friday...we decided we would go sight-seeing. So...we hailed a cab to go to the World Trade Center. I had chills all over the whole time we were there. We walked around for quite a while....looked at all the memorial photo's....then walked over to South Seaport. There we had the BEST Mexican lunch at "Red." It was FAB!!! SO yummy! From there we walked all over the city.....and I mean ALL over. Miles and miles!!! We went to see the Statue of Liberty -- from a distance anyway, we didn't go on the Ferry because it was a very overcast day, sort of dreary. We did walk around Battery Park a little...then we made our way towards the Empire State Building and along the way saw the Book Store that was used as a model for You've got Mail. It was very quaint, complete with dancing cupcakes in the adjacent snack shop. We also stopped at the Scholastic book store. We went inside the Empire St. Bldg but didn't go up because the visibility was only 1 mile. It's not worth the $20 if you can't see anything! From the Empire St. Bldg. we hailed a cab back to the hotel to get ready for Lion King. We went to Bubba Gump for dinner because of our Pizza fiasco. We were told by the Conceirge at our hotel there was a great (reasonably priced) pizza place 2 blocks down -- turns out, it was not so reasonably priced! We knew of another pizza place closer to our hotel (and the Lion King -- it was right across the street from the hotel) but it was PACKED and we only had an hour. So we scarfed down our Bubba Gump and made it to The Lion King with 15 minutes to spare! The show was GREAT! We had awesome seats...center front row on the balcony. It was quite a night of entertainment!

On Saturday we went SHOPPING! We walked down to Central Park for breakfast then walked all around Madison for the shopping. We went to both Trump Towers and went to so many stores! We probably had the most fun shopping in Bloomingdales...the "concierge" there really helped us out a lot and we learned you really have to be in shape to try on spanx! (enough said!). We basically shopped all day....finally made it back to the hotel at a good time for dinner. We ate at Johns Pizza (the place that was packed the night before) and chowed down! It was the best pizza! We had a yummy garlic, spinach, and tomato pizza.....So yummy.... After that, we shopped a little more at Times Square...went to Toys R Us, M&M World, and the Hershey Store. From there we decided to go have a nice dessert and ended up at Bubba Gump again. The waitress was EXTREMELY chatty....turns out, she was from GA and she and I went to the same college...AND her name was Angie! Weird!!! After dessert we just went back to the hotel. On the way back to our hotel (a total of 1 1/2 blocks) we stopped to take pictures of Times Square and that's when a couple of strange men wanted us to take their picture (see my pic's!)....we obliged just so they would leave us alone. They were obviously quite intoxicated and wanted to know why people told them they should not wear pink! There really is never a dull moment in Times Square!!!!

Sunday...we had to leave the hotel by 8:30 to get to the airport in time for our flight and we encountered one of the worst cab drivers ever! He had NO idea how to get to the airport and spent the entire trip holding a map and talking (more like yelling) on the cell phone (I guess to a dispatch operator or something)!! He talked in his native tongue which I didn't even recognize, drove about 90 miles an hour and if that wasn't bad enough, he was a spit talker!! GROSS! So, anyway...the trip to the airport was $33 and since we were really surprised we made it there we decided to just give him $35....the guy looks at the cash and says...the fare is $33 and you only give me $2 tip???? We were SHOCKED! So, LeighAnn says "Have a nice day" and we walked away!!!! I was trying so hard not to crack up laughing in front of the guy! He's lucky he even got any tip at all! And we thanked our lucky stars that we made it to the airport!

We really had a great time (can you tell?) and have decided we must take a trip together annually! It went by so fast we weren't ready to go home!! However, we did get the warmest welcome any Mommy could ask for....as we entered into the baggage claim area in ATL we were greeted by those wonderful husbands of ours....ALL 5 of our children (my 3 and LeighAnn's 2) complete with "Welcome Home Mommy" signs.....it was precious!