New York City

Last weekend, I went to New York City to visit my good friend Angie, who just moved there in September. 

My friend Alicia and I leaving my house for the airport (her first trip to NYC!)

We packed WAY too much stuff for three days in the city -- AND we carried it all on the plane because we were too tight to pay for checking a bag. :)

GOODBYE KANSAS CITY!!

HELLO NEW YORK CITY!!

We hopped in a cab and went to my friend Angie's apartment on the Upper East Side.  Since we hadn't had dinner and were starving, we went to eat at Justin Timberlake's restaurant, called Southern Hospitality.  It was a BBQ place (good food!), just not what I expected for JT's restaurant!  I mean they were playing Shania Twain when we walked in!

LOVE this girl!!

After dinner we went to a bar in the Meat Packing District to meet up with some guys from KC (one of which was Alicia's husband) who were in town for work.  It was a really nice bar, and I'm pretty sure Alicia and I were the only two in jeans and sweaters! 

 

LANCE BASS (from NSYNC) was hanging out at the bar!  When he left, I went outside and asked him if I could take a picture with him.  He was super nice and said of course! YAY!  My first celebrity spotting in the city! :)

So, for some reason, we (ie the drunk boys) decided it would be a good idea to take a LIMO back to their hotel.  $75 for a crappy limo to take us 15 minutes away??  Maybe not the best decision of the trip, but whatever, we had champagne and the guys loved it! ;)

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Friday morning, Cameo (the wife of one of the other guys there for work) and Alicia and I  decided to walk around the city to explore.  We started off in Rockefeller Center.  Angie had to work, but we met up with her on her lunch break and she showed us around a couple places too.

We went to St. Patricks Cathedral - SO big and such a beautiful church!  We actually went back there Sunday morning and went to the church service.  It was PACKED, and it was more like a production than a church service.  It is televised so there were tv crews and people snapping pictures...kind of weird.

After that, we wandered around the city some more...saw the replica of the star on top of the Rockefeller Christmas tree and lots of cool Christmas decorations!

We had lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall pizza place - Rays Pizza or something like that.  Then we had some amazing dessert at 'Cafe Metro' just a few doors down!

After lunch, we set out on foot again (LOTS of walking that day!) to see Central Park and the Time Warner Center.  We stumbled upon a cute little arts and crafts fair and picked out some Christmas tree ornaments to buy.

We ended up walking all the way back to the hotel to meet up with the guys, then went out ON FOOT AGAIN to see Times Square at night (well, evening anyways - it was dark)!

After the little Times Square excursion, we walked back to the hotel, and Alicia and I went to Angie's house to go to dinner with her and Luke.  We went to this amazing little Thai restaurant called Spice just down the street from their apartment.  (And Alicia used chop-sticks for the first time!) :)

After dinner, we took a subway to Grand Central Station (we got to the train just in time to see it leave...) and had the most amazing cupcake EVER from Magnolia bakery.

From Grand Central Station, we walked a couple of blocks to see the New York City Public Library.  (Did you know they just put all their trash on the streest in NYC!?  It's so gross!)

There are big statues of lions outside the library -- of course I had to climb on them for a picture! :)  And then Alicia had to...and then of course Angie too! ;)

From the library, we went to Bryant Park, which is actually just right behind the library.  Angie and Luke said it was just a big open park where they show movies during the summer time, but we thought we'd go check it out anyways!  Well little did we know, there was an ICE SKATING RINK, a beautiful Christmas tree and a fun bar all set up in the park for the Holidays!  SCORE! :)

After our $10 drinks, we walked Alicia back to the hotel (through Times Square again), then walked back through Rockefeller Center to get to the subway station to go back to Angie and Luke's apartment.  Saw some fun things along the way...

Luke's classic picture face

The New Years Eve ball in Times Square

Cuteness :)

Santa at Rockefeller Center taking a break

The Rockefeller tree at night

Cool trees all lit up

We're going to The Bronx??  At night? Really?

SATURDAY MORNING - Angie and I went to the hotel and picked up Alicia and set out for some SHOPPING.  But before we left, we saw some guys on the streets giving away these beautiful ferns (plants)!  They said they were going to throw them away if we didn't take them.  Well we couldn't let that happen.  So we grabbed two and went back to the hotel to keep them in Alicia's room until we could get them on the subway back to Angies.

WHAT WE SAW SHOPPING:

Live models at Hollister

Posing for a picture at Forever 21 

Gucci

Trump Towers

Louis Vuitton

Burberry

Tiffany's

Dior

Chanel

Coach

Prada

Bloomingdales

And to answer the question, NO we did NOT buy anything from ANY of those stores.  In fact, we didn't even go IN any of them!  The two places we bought things from:  H&M and Payless! We're cheap, what can I say!? ;)

After shopping, we hopped on an eerily empty subway (seriously -- empty) to go eat at Katz's Deli.  It was the first deli in NYC.  The line was out the door and it was crazy busy, but it was SO worth it!  It was the BEST sandwich EVER!

Angie and I finally got the ferns home (definitely got some weird looks from the people on the subway...)

Friday night, Alicia and I went to a fancy Italian restaurant - I mean it was so fancy I couldn't get my camera out and take pictures of everything! ;)  We got all dressed up and wore our new dresses we bought that day at H&M.  :) After dinner we took a cab to the Empire State Building to see the city at night.  The views were pretty amazing - but it was FREEZING COLD up there!

(NYE ball in Times Square)

Sunday was our last day in the city, and we all really wanted to see the Statue of Liberty.  So after we went to church at St. Patricks Cathedral, we took the train down to the Financial District, got off at Battery Park, and ate lunch at Subway.

The reflection picture I took on the subway

Battery Park, as soon as we walked up from the subway

View of the Financial District from Battery Park

Well, it turns out you have to wait in line for a LONG time to get on a ferry to the Statue of Liberty!  And we didn't really have THAT much time since our flight was that night.  After waiting in a cold line for over an hour, we finally got on the ferry and opted to only get off at Ellis Island instead of Liberty Island (where the actual Statue of Liberty is).  We got close enough to get pictures, that was good enough! :)

There is a big museum on Ellis Island - lots of history - which I'm not in to so much!  It was still pretty cool, but we didn't have near enough time to see all of it. 

(Ang being a dork in the guest shop at the museum)

When we got off the ferry back in Battery Park, Angie snapped this picture - isn't it amazing?!  She's so much better at taking pictures than I am!

We hopped on the subway, departed ways from Angie (*tear*), got our stuff from the hotel and hopped in a cab to the airport.  We ate some REALLY good Chinese food at the airport for dinner and caugh our uneventful flight home.

So -- that was my vacation to NYC! 

(Alicia has a really cool blog, too - and she has her own account of the trip to NYC.)