Stephanie and I got a great last-minute airfare deal to NYC and decided to make a long-weekend out of visiting the Big Apple.
We flew out Saturday morning and got to NYC in time to meet Ross for a lunch of authentic "New York pizza" at Patsy's. After lunch we wandered wandered the Upper East side in the 95 degree heat.
Saturday evening, on the recommendation of Steph's sister, we ate dinner at Junior's and then saw Xanadu on Broadway. Both were excellent choices! However, we were so full from our dinner that we didn't get to try the famous Junior's cheesecake. After the show, we met at Ross & Molly's new apartment and then walked to Cafe d'Alsace for dessert and drinks.
Sunday morning, we met Ross, Molly, Eric, and Wendy at Penelope for brunch. We had to wait for over an hour for a table, but it was worth it. I would definitely recommend the Nutella French Toast!
After brunch, Stephanie and I made our way to the Empire State Building to get a good aerial view of the City. We had bought and printed our observatory tickets from our hotel lobby and was therefore able to skip the majority of the lines. After a short wait in the line to get to elevators, we headed up to the 86th floor observation deck. What a great view! Unfortunately it was pretty overcast that day, but the view of the city was still quite impressive.
Next on our agenda was a walk though Central Park. We had grand intentions of walking from the south end of the Park to the Boathouse - however, those plans didn't take the 95+ degree heat into consideration. We ended up just sitting on a park bench and people watching.
When we couldn't take the heat any longer we walked to the Shops at Columbus Circle, across the street from Trump Tower. The Shops is a very high-end mall, so we definitely couldn't afford to do any shopping there (we admired a $255,000 crystal sculpture on display) but we could take advantage of their air conditioning.
Stephanie's college friends, Craig & Amalia, met us in the mall and we had a drink in the Stone Rose, a fancy lounge supposedly owned by Cindy Crawford's husband. The drinks were good, but I don't know if they were worth $16 each!
After finishing our drinks, we walked the Upper West side and had dinner at a nice French restaurant, Bistro Cassis. Even though we couldn't tell if our waitress was French or German, we had a very nice time at dinner.
After dinner, we said our goodbyes to Craig & Amalia and took a subway back to Times Square to meet Ross & Molly for a late-night drink. (No...we don't usually drink this much) We met at the Ava Lounge, which is on the roof of the Dream Hotel. The drinks were ok, the waitress was less-than attentive, but the view was great...you could look down over the lights of Times Square. We had a very nice time at the lounge, until rain and lightening forced us to head home for the night.
On our way back to the hotel, we noticed a group of people swarming outside a theater exit trying to get autographs from someone. We went over to investigate and found that the commotion was around Bradley Whitford, currently starring in the Broadway show Boeing Boeing.
Monday morning, we walked to Rockefeller Center, where we had a New York bagel for breakfast and to saw the Today show taping. They weren't filming outside the Today show studio - they were busy converting the street into a beach tennis court - but we could see where they were filming.
After leaving Rockefeller Center, we took the subway to TriBeCa to meet Eric & Wendy for lunch. It is Restaurant Week in New York, and Eric was nice enough to modify his lunch reservation at the Tribeca Grill to include Stephanie and me. We had a delicious lunch off of the Restaurant Week Prix Fixe menu and learned all about morels.
After lunch, we said our goodbyes to Eric & Wendy and caught a cab to Chinatown so that Steph could go purse shopping. We had heard that the authorities had been cracking down on some of the knock-off purse distributors, and we definitely saw evidence of that during our trip. Most of the shops had removed the name-brand logos from their purses, leaving slits in the leather where the logos had previously been attached. We were assured by the vendors that they would re-attach the logo for us, but that kind of detracts from the mystique of buying a "name-brand" product. The vendors also seemed much more reluctant to invite customers into their back-rooms where the better knock-offs are sold. After much looking and negotiating, Steph finally got a couple of new Chinatown purses to add to her collection.
After Chinatown, our time in NYC was almost up, so we took the subway back to our hotel at Times Square, retrieved our luggage, and then caught a cab to Laguardia for our flight home.
It was a very hot, exhausting, expensive weekend, but we had a blast. Now that Eric and Ross will both be in the NYC area, we will definitely have to back more often!
Click below for pictures from the weekend:
