NYC - Thursday / Friday

I made my 3rd (not to be confused with 1st or 2nd) trip to NYC this past weekend to visit my good friend, Angie, again!  It was SUCH a great weekend...my most fun trip there yet, by far!

Matt and I took a 1/2 day of vacation on Thursday and took off around 3:30 so we could make it to NYC for dinner.  And what a good decision that was!  Once we waited in line for a taxi (which took forever, like everything does in the city) and met up with Angie and Luke, we went to Centolire for the most amazing pasta dish I've ever had.  For real.  And to make it even better, it was within walking distance to their apartment.  No more cabs = no more car sickness!

Homemade pasta prepared tableside

Angie and I ordered the same thing.

After dinner (seriously, it was SO good), we went to meet up with Matt's best friend, Denzil, at Auction House - a sketchy little bar with really bad curtains and red velvet couches.  It was just a few blocks away, the music was great, and it wasn't crowded at all.  It was the perfect spot to just chill and have a few drinks and catch up.

The place was petty empty, as you can see!

We weren't out too terribly late, and got a good night's rest in Angie and Luke's spare bedroom.  Yea, they have a SPARE BEDROOM in New York City.  And it's a nice place on 88th between Park and Lexington - prime location just a few blocks from Central Park!

Angie and Denzil both had to work on Friday, so Luke took us out for the day.  The weather couldn't have been better - sunny and warm enough we didn't even need our coats!  Luke was a great tour guide, and I finally got to actually go IN to Central Park!  It was beautiful, even in December.  I just can't get over how BIG this park is in the middle of a huge, crazy city!

The Guggenheim Museum (that we didn't have time to go in)

The Great Lawn - concerts are held here in the summer

After wandering through the park for awhile, Luke took us to Belvedere Castle for the highest and best views of the park...

...and then to The Central Park Boathouse.

We kept walking through Central Park - and definitely would have gotten lost if it weren't for Luke!  We saw fountains and ponds, amazing singers under a bridge, and the John Lennon memorial before exiting the park on the west side.

Our plan for Friday was to hit the American Museum of Natural History.  We ended up getting a pretty late start (since we didn't get out of bed until 11), so we were a little rushed at the museum.  But it was one of the coolest museums I've ever seen.  You could easily spend all day in there reading and looking at everything. 

For some reason, I was really excited to see those dinosaur bones (and they were really cool).  But then I saw they had an Africa room, which I of course LOVED even more...

    

    

   

After a quick bite for lunch in the museum cafeteria (pressed for time, remember), we did a really quick walk-through of some of the highlights that we wanted to see in the rest of the museum.  That included reptiles, monkeys, artifacts from the South Pacific, and a giant tree stump:

Puppets!

This tree began growing in 550AD!

One of the last rooms we visited was the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life.  And it turned out to be my favorite - by far.  The room was kind of dark and there was a giant (G I A N T) whale hanging from the ceiling of the room.  All of the animals looked ridiculously real, as did their natural surroundings, right down to the waves in the water. 

Who knows what else we missed at that museum.  It was huge, and a couple hours just wasn't near long enough to see half of it!  If I ever have an entire week to spend in the city, I will definitely go back there and do some more exploring.

It was a little after 3pm when we left the museum and hopped on the subway to go down to the Columbus Circle Holiday Market.  I went there last year, and wanted to check it out again to find a new ornament for the Christmas tree to remember this trip.  Well, we did pick out a cute NYC ornament, but I also found a watch I just couldn't resist.  I have a 'thing' for watches, especially unique/handmade ones.  So I just couldn't pass up a purple Ecowrist one...



Columbus Circle Holiday Market

There were some pretty cool things at the holiday market, and I bought Angie and I matching scarves.  We walked along 59th street (south edge of Central Park) to catch another subway back to the apartment...and got there just in time to welcome Angie home from work.

The plan was to meet up with Angie and Luke for a drink or two after the show.  But the show was a couple of hours long, and Angie was tired after being up late the night before, getting up early, and working all day.  Very understandable - we all got to sleep in!  So Matt and I hopped in a cab to meet up with Denzil at a bar off Union Square.  After a mini-meltdown by me and a slight argument over subways vs cabs, we ended up at Heartland Brewery for a few beers.

I was prety tired by this point and just wanted to go to bed, so I convinced the guys to stick me in a cab with $20 and send me home so they could have some fun at another club without me.  (I tried for the subway, but they weren't having it...) 

Waiting outside while Denzil flags down a cab for me

They ended up at Sweet and Vicious (doesn't that sound interesting!) for the night, and I'm pretty sure they had an okay time.  I got a call a couple hours later to come let Matt in, and he was feeling pretty good. :)

Saturday / Sunday post coming soon!