for a mini-TR to NYC!
Dr. Belle & I had a fabulous "girls week" in NYC.
Dr. Belle got into NYC very, very late Monday night. Her train from Chicago (she loves the train) was delayed over four hours for a "tresspassing incident" which is train-speak for something you don't really want to know about.
But, if you do, just ask...
So, she had paved the way, checking into our hotel - the East Side Marriott on Lexington and 49th, just across the way from the Waldorf. She got herself to her conference on Tuesday morning whilst I was hurtling towards her on the train.
I started my day at 4:30 a.m.
No one really wants to drive into Boston in the morning. My train was to leave at 8:20, and DM, in particular, isn't familiar enough with the city to drive down and back in rush hour.
So, I had found a bus that runs every day from my neighboring town to Boston, but the only bus that would get me to South Station by 8:20 was one that left at 6:00, and it's first come/first serve, so they suggested arriving by 5:45 at the latest. Sigh. I am not a morning person.
Mom & I dragged the boys out of bed and put them, still in PJ's, in the van at 5:20.
The bus was full, but uneventful. My train, amazingly, was on time, and I had a nice ride down to NY in a seat by myself. I slept some, read some, and generally had a micro-mini vacation there, with just 4 hours to myself!
I got into Penn Station on time at 12:20, and cabbed over to the hotel. Belle was planning on meeting me there after attending a couple of morning sessions of her conference. She ended up just maybe 45 seconds behind me on the next elevator up to our room, and we were very happy to see each other!
Contrary to our DIS natures, we hadn't much of a plan.
We were hungry, though, so wound up just walking down Lex Ave. and finding a wonderful burger place called Rare, and enjoying some burgers and a couple of frosty beverages...
We then just set out to explore. We wandered into Grand Central to have a look about, then happened across the Library. Here is Dr. Belle outside the Library - she's so pretty!
We just kept walking, and wound up stumbling across Rockefeller Center, and there was no line, so we went to The Top of the Rock, and got some lovely views of the city. It was incredibly hot almost the whole trip, so there was haze in about every picture. Here's a sample, though!
We walked some more, and talked about going over to the Waldorf, where Dr. Belle's former advisor decided to stay, and just having a drink. When we arrived, Belle's phone rang, and it was N., her advisor, asking if we wanted to join her and her friend for dinner at a small casual French place for dinner. It had somehow gotten to be 7:00ish, so we said sure. We went to our hotel and picked up N.'s conference packet, which Belle had, then went back to the Waldorf and saw N.'s suite - nice! - and then went to dinner.
N. is from NYC, which I hadn't known, so she and her friend were kind of fun to listen to, and we had a lovely dinner at Le Bonne Soupe on 55th. I had Quiche Lorraine, Belle had a gorgonzola salad, N. had a French Onion soup combo, and her friend had a Croque Monsieur. Yummy all around! I wound up in charge of wine, and we had a nice Sancerre.
After dinner, Belle & I returned to our hotel, and just crashed. She'd had the horrible train ride, and I'd gotten up so early... We set the alarm for 7:00, and thought we might go to the Empire State Building before her presentation in the p.m.
Um, yeah. 7:00 came and went... 8:00... 9:00... 10:00... We finally did get up sometime before 11:00! Oops.
We got up and went just a block or two down and had breakfast (served all day - hooray!) and then back to the hotel to shower and prepare for her presentation.
We cabbed to her conference. Her presentation went very well, and then we did stay for another session.
I'd bought Mets vs. Cardinals tickets for that evening as a b-day present for Belle. We changed clothes in the conference restroom and then went straight to the subway to make our way to Queens. Apparently there'd been a power outage in the Upper East side earlier, so we had to let 4 trains go before we had a chance of getting on. We did fine on that, though, and made it out to Shea. It was lightninging and thundering, and so we wondered...
We figured we were late, but apparently it had already rained and moved on in Queens, so they were just removing the tarp from the field!
We found our seats, which were field level and along the third base line. We took turns getting our hot dogs and beers, and settled in to watch the game. Our Cards gave up a home run in the first with a man on, so the score was quickly 2-0 Mets. Sigh.
The clouds were building... The lightning started again... and in the middle of the 5th inning, this happened:
It became quite clear that the game wasn't going to go on, so we left to try to get ahead of the crowds. We got completely soaked getting back up to the subway station (which was not far at all) but had no problem getting to the hotel. We changed and went to the hotel lounge for one last beer, and called it a day!
It seemed that there might be more rain the next day, so we tried to make a plan. The rain wasn't supposed to happen until after noon, so we thought we'd get up early and go up the Empire State, then we thought we'd have to skip the Circle Line with bad weather coming in.
We did get up with our alarm, and got right to the ESB. It was fun with cool, though hazy, views. It still looked pretty clear, so we hoofed over to the docks for the Circle Line tour. It was fun, but hot, hot, hot, and we both got sunburnt. Oops.
I got this nice view of the Statue of Liberty:
Dr. Belle's sister is married to a guy from NJ, and his younger sister lives in the city and was working at her job at the Chocolate Bar in Greenwich Village, so we took the subway down to see her. We enjoyed some gelato and conversation, then headed back uptown to do some shopping and eating. We stopped back at the hotel to drop off some chocolate
, and then walked up toward Central Park and saw F.A.O. Schwartz and a bunch of people in line for the iPhone at the adjacent Apple Store.
We then walked down 5th Avenue and stopped in at Tiffany's, and then the World of
Disney store, where I picked up an NYPD MIckey for Buzz and an FDNY Donald for Woody.
Dr. Belle got some things for her DNeph, and we moved on.
She'd read about a good Korean place, and since we'd only had gelato for lunch, we headed out to dinner. It was further downtown, but we walked, and thoroughly enjoyed a great meal and a couple of Hite beers there. We then headed back up toward the hotel, but looked for a bar or pub. We finally found an Irish pub that had seats for us (everything we tried at first was just full!) and wound up sitting there for the rest of the night. Here's me after, um, four Harp's...:
We got back to the hotel with the plan of leaving our suitcases with the bell desk and going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the morning, while catching our trains out at 3:30 and 4:00 respectively. That plan worked very well - we were at the Met before 11:00. The place is gi-normous - we could have spent 3 days - but we had time to do a Highlights of the Museum tour and then walk around some ourselves before heading back to the hotel to get our bags. We cabbed to Penn. My train was on time, and off I went. Dr. Belle was supposed to go just a half hour later, but she didn't end up going for nearly an hour after her scheduled time.
The train was pretty full, but I read and we were actually early getting back to Boston. I had to wait about an hour and 15 minutes for the bus back to NH (I knew that going in), but the bus was also early getting home. We'd hired a babysitter so that Mom could come get me at 10:15 without making Buzz & Woody be up then, and she had just gotten there when we came in.
A lovely trip, and I can't wait to go back!
) and with D.'s totally random schedule, finding the right job is going to be hard. I don't know that I'll want to be at home once the boys are in all day school all the time, but... I'm a good employee, but have always worked in 9-5 offices, and the thought of having to earn vacation time, find summer and after school care for the boys, etc... Since D. is absolutely gone when he works, I would always be the "come get your sick kid" or "stay home with sick kid" person in our house.
But seriously... it kind of is.... 
Ah, well. It was an awesome way to grow up.
