franandaj
I'm so happy, I could BOUNCE!
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
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The third and final installment of my “Off Topic” trips is a super quick one that Jill and I took to be crazy! This all started on the 4th of July when I was having an insomniac moment in the middle of the night. For some reason, I’ve gotten used to sleeping with the television on. Not too loud, but just enough for some background noise. And then when I wake up and can’t sleep, I’ve got something to amuse me while I try to fall back asleep.
One of the shows that I snooze to is Morning Joe. Often times they have people on there pontificating to the point that it helps me sleep. However on July 4th they had a pre taped show, so that the staff could have the day off. Well one of the “pieces” that they aired was Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells talking about their new upcoming musical on Broadway. The two became a successful pair in their run of “The Book of Mormon” about a decade ago. Since that collaboration ended, the two had been looking for something to work on together again.
Well they had found it. Actually they found it in March of 2020, but we all know how that turned out. So they were finally getting it in production and it would open in October of 2023 with previews starting in September and a total run of 20 weeks. Jill had remarked about how these two were a hilarious pair, and their little promotional shtick that I saw made me think, “Wouldn’t it be fun to fly to NY on a Friday, see the Show Saturday and fly home Sunday?” You see between the cruise earlier this year and Egypt, Jill was all out of vacation time. This trip wouldn’t use up any time, and how crazy is that to fly to NY for a weekend to see a show?
The show was called Gutenberg: The Musical. It’s about two guys who have a dream to put a musical on Broadway, but they know nothing about Broadway and nothing about Gutenberg, the inventor of the Printing Press. So they Google him, and make up the rest! How could this not be funny with these two guys behind it?
So the plan was put into motion. In the months leading up to it we read articles on the show. Gad shared posts on Social Media about preparations and we were super excited. I left Long Beach on Southwest super early, like 7AM and arrived into Denver around 10:30AM. Jill got there around 11:00AM and we settled on Vino Volo for lunch. In hindsight, we should have paid the $50 companion fee to go to the Centurion lounge, because we ended up spending way more than that, but live and learn.
Our flight kept getting pushed back, and then forward. The text messages were coming in every 10-15 minutes, and each one would contradict the previous one. Finally we just went to our gate to wait it out. As it turns out, this was the day that New York City got hit with that major storm and flooded one of the terminals at LaGuardia and other parts of the city. We were delayed around three hours because there was a full ground stop at the airport where we were supposed to land.
We were supposed to arrive at 8PM and in the end we got there at 11PM. But the good news was that the storm had passed and now it was clear and the weather was actually pretty nice! This was another carry-on only trip, and we were off the plane in no time and ready to hit the town!
We ordered a Lyft and went to meet our driver at the pick up location. He was a pretty good driver and even pointed out some sights on the way to our hotel. Here is the empire state building from the ground.
Jill was able to score a room at the Marriott Marquis right off Times Square with her Bonvoy points. I covered the flights with the airline miles Fran left me. At this point the only costs we’d incurred were the tickets to the show and the food and drinks at the Denver Airport.
We’d had some ideas of where to get dinner, but those all went out the window with the three hour delay. As we were getting our bags unpacked, etc. Jill noticed out the window below our room that there was Junior’s (Deli) and it looked open. We googled and it was open until 1AM! Perfect! There was a 20 minute wait, but if we wanted to sit at the counter we could be seated immediately. Even better.
This guy was our server and bartender. He did his best at my Martini. They didn’t have any onions, so a twist of lemon was going to have to do!
We split a corned beef ruben and fries which was just perfect for the two of us…..
Because we had room to order a slice of Cheesecake!
I think we both slept well that night. We didn’t sleep in too late despite the late night. We were already dressed and at breakfast by 9:30AM since that’s the time stamp on this photo.
Jill got the Cheese Blintzes. They were such a huge portion she didn’t even have a chance of finishing all of it.
Same for me except I went with the Corn Flake Crusted French Toast.
With our bellies full, and nothing to do until dinner at around 5PM we pondered our options. We decided to check out Times Square for a bit. It was drizzling and a little chilly (for me, Jill lives in Denver).
We made a stop at the Disney Store, but didn’t purchase anything.
We had decided that our activity for the day would be to visit the Museum of Broadway. It had opened fairly recently and was right up the street from our hotel.
Before the self guided tour started, we waited in a room where they had playbills for many of the current productions playing on Broadway. We thought taking a picture with the one we were planning on seeing was a good idea.
The tour started with a movie/multimedia type presentation in a room with about 15-20 other people. It defined the area that we call Broadway, and the history of how that area was developed and eventually became protected. After that brief presentation the self guided tour began. It started in the late 1800s and covered all kinds of performers in vaudeville, ragtime, and many other genres. At one point, we walked up three to four stories of stairs to get to the top floor of the building.
The major displays began with the musicals Showboat and Oklahoma! Following that nearly every major musical of the 20th century had some sort of display. As we moved from room to room, the music changed with the featured musical. There were also videos with insights from composers, performers, and others who were associated with the production.
There were a number of photo ops, and we took advantage of a couple.
There were costumes….
Props
And even stage sets.
Kinky Boots? We got ‘em!
It was very well done. At the end there was a whole section to give you insight into the entire process from writing and composing the musical, to orchestrating it, and even working the sound, and being in the pit. There was a student group who was there and the teacher was asking them a lot of questions. It got a little congested in there, so we just cut out and figured we had seen enough. We were glad that we visited.
We still had several hours to kill, so we decided to go look for our restaurant and the theater. They were all within just a few blocks of the hotel, so we did. It was a good thing we did. The restaurant was actually below street level. It barely had any signage. If we didn’t know where we were going when got there at the time of our reservation, we might have been walking around looking all over for it.
Then we walked by the theater. A Matinee was just going into the theater.
After that we went back to the room. I think we walked through the Hershey’s store and Jill got some presents for her niece and nephew. They also gave us fun size samples. Perfect. Lunch. We also stopped at a Bodega and got some beverages and snacks as well. That fun size candy bar wasn’t going to be enough, but we didn’t want to spoil our appetites for dinner!
We hung out in the room for a while playing on our tablets, watching TV and talking about future plans. Eventually we both got dressed for the show. I forgot to mention, one of the perks of Jill’s Bonvoy membership was that she got a “resort credit” that we could spend on food and drinks. The night before I had used up that day’s credit by ordering a “fish bowl” of wine and taking it up to the room. Jill wasn’t interested in beverages that night so I had it all to myself.
We decided to share the credit today and went down to the bar for a glass of wine.
Then it was off to Butter by Alex Guarnaschelli.
When we first looked at the menu in July (I think), it was the summer menu, and we were like, “hmmmm….do we want to eat here?” but in August the menu changed and there were so many delicious things on there we were having a difficult time choosing what to order! We decided to split everything so we could taste more.
We finally settled on Little Gem Lettuce, Parmesan Dressing, Sourdough Croutons. For a salad, it was pretty tasty!
We also chose the Gnocchi “Mac n Cheese”, Melted Petit Basque, aged Cheddar. This was super yummy!
We split a main as well, the Filet Mignon Beef Wellington, mushroom duxelles, Port Wine Reduction. This was absolutely divine and Jill let me have all the mushrooms!
The dessert menu isn’t online and I didn’t take a picture so I’m making a guess at what these things were called. I know that they called these things beignets, but they were really jelly donuts.
Jill got this chocolate cake, it was really rich and she couldn’t finish it, so we had it packed up and we took it home.
We both ordered after dinner cocktails. I had an Espresso Martini and she had a Chocolate Martini.
We finished dinner a little earlier than we expected so we stopped by the hotel room to drop off Jill’s cake.
[Continued in Next Post]
One of the shows that I snooze to is Morning Joe. Often times they have people on there pontificating to the point that it helps me sleep. However on July 4th they had a pre taped show, so that the staff could have the day off. Well one of the “pieces” that they aired was Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells talking about their new upcoming musical on Broadway. The two became a successful pair in their run of “The Book of Mormon” about a decade ago. Since that collaboration ended, the two had been looking for something to work on together again.
Well they had found it. Actually they found it in March of 2020, but we all know how that turned out. So they were finally getting it in production and it would open in October of 2023 with previews starting in September and a total run of 20 weeks. Jill had remarked about how these two were a hilarious pair, and their little promotional shtick that I saw made me think, “Wouldn’t it be fun to fly to NY on a Friday, see the Show Saturday and fly home Sunday?” You see between the cruise earlier this year and Egypt, Jill was all out of vacation time. This trip wouldn’t use up any time, and how crazy is that to fly to NY for a weekend to see a show?
The show was called Gutenberg: The Musical. It’s about two guys who have a dream to put a musical on Broadway, but they know nothing about Broadway and nothing about Gutenberg, the inventor of the Printing Press. So they Google him, and make up the rest! How could this not be funny with these two guys behind it?
So the plan was put into motion. In the months leading up to it we read articles on the show. Gad shared posts on Social Media about preparations and we were super excited. I left Long Beach on Southwest super early, like 7AM and arrived into Denver around 10:30AM. Jill got there around 11:00AM and we settled on Vino Volo for lunch. In hindsight, we should have paid the $50 companion fee to go to the Centurion lounge, because we ended up spending way more than that, but live and learn.
Our flight kept getting pushed back, and then forward. The text messages were coming in every 10-15 minutes, and each one would contradict the previous one. Finally we just went to our gate to wait it out. As it turns out, this was the day that New York City got hit with that major storm and flooded one of the terminals at LaGuardia and other parts of the city. We were delayed around three hours because there was a full ground stop at the airport where we were supposed to land.
We were supposed to arrive at 8PM and in the end we got there at 11PM. But the good news was that the storm had passed and now it was clear and the weather was actually pretty nice! This was another carry-on only trip, and we were off the plane in no time and ready to hit the town!
We ordered a Lyft and went to meet our driver at the pick up location. He was a pretty good driver and even pointed out some sights on the way to our hotel. Here is the empire state building from the ground.
Jill was able to score a room at the Marriott Marquis right off Times Square with her Bonvoy points. I covered the flights with the airline miles Fran left me. At this point the only costs we’d incurred were the tickets to the show and the food and drinks at the Denver Airport.
We’d had some ideas of where to get dinner, but those all went out the window with the three hour delay. As we were getting our bags unpacked, etc. Jill noticed out the window below our room that there was Junior’s (Deli) and it looked open. We googled and it was open until 1AM! Perfect! There was a 20 minute wait, but if we wanted to sit at the counter we could be seated immediately. Even better.
This guy was our server and bartender. He did his best at my Martini. They didn’t have any onions, so a twist of lemon was going to have to do!
We split a corned beef ruben and fries which was just perfect for the two of us…..
Because we had room to order a slice of Cheesecake!
I think we both slept well that night. We didn’t sleep in too late despite the late night. We were already dressed and at breakfast by 9:30AM since that’s the time stamp on this photo.
Jill got the Cheese Blintzes. They were such a huge portion she didn’t even have a chance of finishing all of it.
Same for me except I went with the Corn Flake Crusted French Toast.
With our bellies full, and nothing to do until dinner at around 5PM we pondered our options. We decided to check out Times Square for a bit. It was drizzling and a little chilly (for me, Jill lives in Denver).
We made a stop at the Disney Store, but didn’t purchase anything.
We had decided that our activity for the day would be to visit the Museum of Broadway. It had opened fairly recently and was right up the street from our hotel.
Before the self guided tour started, we waited in a room where they had playbills for many of the current productions playing on Broadway. We thought taking a picture with the one we were planning on seeing was a good idea.
The tour started with a movie/multimedia type presentation in a room with about 15-20 other people. It defined the area that we call Broadway, and the history of how that area was developed and eventually became protected. After that brief presentation the self guided tour began. It started in the late 1800s and covered all kinds of performers in vaudeville, ragtime, and many other genres. At one point, we walked up three to four stories of stairs to get to the top floor of the building.
The major displays began with the musicals Showboat and Oklahoma! Following that nearly every major musical of the 20th century had some sort of display. As we moved from room to room, the music changed with the featured musical. There were also videos with insights from composers, performers, and others who were associated with the production.
There were a number of photo ops, and we took advantage of a couple.
There were costumes….
Props
And even stage sets.
Kinky Boots? We got ‘em!
It was very well done. At the end there was a whole section to give you insight into the entire process from writing and composing the musical, to orchestrating it, and even working the sound, and being in the pit. There was a student group who was there and the teacher was asking them a lot of questions. It got a little congested in there, so we just cut out and figured we had seen enough. We were glad that we visited.
We still had several hours to kill, so we decided to go look for our restaurant and the theater. They were all within just a few blocks of the hotel, so we did. It was a good thing we did. The restaurant was actually below street level. It barely had any signage. If we didn’t know where we were going when got there at the time of our reservation, we might have been walking around looking all over for it.
Then we walked by the theater. A Matinee was just going into the theater.
After that we went back to the room. I think we walked through the Hershey’s store and Jill got some presents for her niece and nephew. They also gave us fun size samples. Perfect. Lunch. We also stopped at a Bodega and got some beverages and snacks as well. That fun size candy bar wasn’t going to be enough, but we didn’t want to spoil our appetites for dinner!
We hung out in the room for a while playing on our tablets, watching TV and talking about future plans. Eventually we both got dressed for the show. I forgot to mention, one of the perks of Jill’s Bonvoy membership was that she got a “resort credit” that we could spend on food and drinks. The night before I had used up that day’s credit by ordering a “fish bowl” of wine and taking it up to the room. Jill wasn’t interested in beverages that night so I had it all to myself.
We decided to share the credit today and went down to the bar for a glass of wine.
Then it was off to Butter by Alex Guarnaschelli.
When we first looked at the menu in July (I think), it was the summer menu, and we were like, “hmmmm….do we want to eat here?” but in August the menu changed and there were so many delicious things on there we were having a difficult time choosing what to order! We decided to split everything so we could taste more.
We finally settled on Little Gem Lettuce, Parmesan Dressing, Sourdough Croutons. For a salad, it was pretty tasty!
We also chose the Gnocchi “Mac n Cheese”, Melted Petit Basque, aged Cheddar. This was super yummy!
We split a main as well, the Filet Mignon Beef Wellington, mushroom duxelles, Port Wine Reduction. This was absolutely divine and Jill let me have all the mushrooms!
The dessert menu isn’t online and I didn’t take a picture so I’m making a guess at what these things were called. I know that they called these things beignets, but they were really jelly donuts.
Jill got this chocolate cake, it was really rich and she couldn’t finish it, so we had it packed up and we took it home.
We both ordered after dinner cocktails. I had an Espresso Martini and she had a Chocolate Martini.
We finished dinner a little earlier than we expected so we stopped by the hotel room to drop off Jill’s cake.
[Continued in Next Post]
No wonder there was flooding!
with wine 
