Back in November my aunt had offered to let us use her time share in New York City for the New Year. Not the whole year, silly, from December 30th - January 2 at the Manhattan Club which is located just north of Times Square! This was right around when Merlin got sick though and so while we really appreciated the offer, we couldn't accept it. A little while after he passed away though I called her to see if it was still available. Those of you who know me in real life, particularly those of you who actually saw me this week, will not be surprised to learn that it was.
We got there on Wednesday, and the boys were beyond excited. After we checked into the hotel, we met Suzanne, her husband and another friend for dinner. After rejecting the opportunity to wait an hour for two disparate tables at a pricey but excellent diner called the Brooklyn Diner, we went to a different diner. I took great delight in eating gyros since I enjoy them so much and they're hard to find around here. Afterward we went back to the hotel where I fell asleep; the boys did continue to stay up incredibly late. I think I had a slight fever that night, as I was coming down with a cold and sore throat.
The next day we made it to the Brooklyn Diner for breakfast. As expected, the food was great, but it ended up being $100 for the four of us! I do have to say that we had been warned that the portions were huge and that we should have the boys share. The upside is that we got three meals worth of food and didn't have to buy breakfast the next day! The Big Giraffe and I traded off working out at the otherwise empty gym and then took the boys to FAO Schwartz. Being New Year's Eve and being FAO Schwartz made it super crowded. The boys were overwhelmed. We had told them they could each get a small souvenir. It was all just too much for YS and he couldn't make a selection. We told him he could get something at the M&M store.
After getting a snack, we took the boys to Rockerfeller Center to see the Christmas Tree. The Big Giraffe and I were quite taken with it. The boys were quite taken with the pigeons eating soft pretzels and couldn't have cared less about the tree. In fact when the Big Giraffe was trying to take their picture in front of the tree OS wanted to know if he could get his picture taken with the pigeons instead! Sadly though I said no and am now regretting it.
We watched the ice skaters at Rockerfeller Center and even saw a marriage proposal there (or two brazen people willing to lie to get the ice to themselves)! Then we headed off to the M&M store. Given that it was just past 4pm on New Year's Eve in an area filled with a captive audience of cold pedestrians who had almost eight hours to wait for the ball to drop, we were surprised to find the store closed. YS was pretty upset, until we stopped in a dinky souvenir shop where he fell in love with a stuffed animal frog. It was actually nicer than a collection of stuffed animals, including a frog, sewed to a toy boat that we had passed at FAO Schwartz, and cost a lot less so everyone was happy.
Later on that evening we got together with Suzanne and hubby and 3 other friends for a New Year's Eve dinner at a Turkish restaurant. Those of you who know me will not be surprised that I ordered gyros again! The food was great, and the conversation was even better. The boys both enjoyed the food and drawing pictures on multi-colored post-it notes. They became ecstatic on our way out when a couple gave OS a really nice velvet hat with streamers that lit up and YS a light up necklace/noise maker. We then headed back to the hotel. Three of us fell asleep just before midnight. The Big Giraffe made a literal eleventh hour (and forty-five minute) attempt to walk outside of the hotel in sight of the ball, but could not get an elevator. He watched the ball drop on TV in the room, same as he used to when he lived in New York City.
After breakfast the next morning, we headed to the Museum of Natural History, which also happens to be the Big Giraffe's favorite museum in the world. All I can say is that it is one large museum! We were there for several hours and probably only saw about a third of it. The boys had a great time, particularly with the taxidermy, ocean section, and dinosaurs. I do wish I had listened to myself and left earlier instead of trying to milk their attention span for all that it was worth. Our departure included temper tantrums.
Suzanne's hubby and YS made deep dish pizzas for everyone while Suzanne and I went to an Israeli cafe to get real hot chocolates with actual melted pieces of chocolate added to steamed milk The boys watched Disney's cartoon Robin Hood...three times over the evening. During the third showing after dinner, a few of us went to Magnolia Bakery to pickup cupcakes. It shouldn't come as any surprise that I was up for a large part of the night with horrible stomach pains.
After a final breakfast with friends, we took the boys to see a gingerbread house exhibit made up of creations from several famous bakeries. I am sure they were beautiful when first crafted, but they did not stand up well to a couple of weeks in a hot and dry hotel lobby. I would even go so far as to say that the one the boys made last week with a gingerbread house kit from last year looked better. Then we hit the road.
OS is named after a friend of ours who passed away at 30 from colon cancer. We had originally planned on driving to northwest New Jersey on our way home to visit his parents. After hearing about an alleged blizzard hitting New England, the Big Giraffe conducted an extensive analysis of weather.com's hourly predictions throughout our route. He concluded that the trip to New Jersey should be fine and that the trip home was predicted to be equally bad no matter when and from where we attempted it. If weather.com was right, we could stop at a hotel on the route for one more night. I had planned ahead and brought an extra change of clothing for both boys and me.
We not only had a great time in New Jersey (hey, stop snickering, I lived in the Garden State for two years and I like it) but we found a gap between internet and reality. Yes, there was a lot of wind, but there was no traffic and no snow in New Jersey, New York, or Connecticut. Wind blew a light dusting of already fallen snow into the windshield a few times in the last half hour as we approached home, and there was slush coating the road in the two minutes from leaving the highway through pulling into our snowy but passable driveway. Maybe it was part of their New Year's resolution, but the cats didn't even pee on our beds when we were gone!
A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: Bringing extra clothes is a great way to ensure an easy road trip, and choosing New York City and seeing friends is a great way to ensure fun at the destination.
Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.
sounds like a great trip full of food. Glad it also had a couple of gyros opportunities for you :)