The Young and the Restless

New York

When we went to New York 6 years ago we had a precisely planned agenda filled with all the traditional touristy stuff, but this time I was in charge of planning it which means we had absolutely nothing planned and I loved it. We walked wherever our little feet decided to go, ate at whatever greasy NY pizza place that we wanted to (I seriously couldn't get enough, I had to have it atleast once a day) and just had the best time exploring the city. The first day we hit a flea market and Canal street and after that I was so done with shopping, it was the same cheap crap on every corner but the kids were thrilled with that same cheap crap that we brought home for them. We roamed through Little Italy and Chinatown and I think the highlight of the trip for Jason was when we discovered a restraunt in Chinatown that served shaved noodles. It's these noodles they have in Taiwaan that he's talked about for the past 13 years since his mission. They were actually really good and because I loved seeing him so excited, I was a nice wife to go all the way back to Chinatown the next day so that we could eat there again. We walked around Battery park, saw Lady Liberty from a distance (we did the boat thing out to the island last time and once is good enough for me), visited the WTC site (I'm amazed at how little has changed since the last time we were there--this statue was in the lobby at the time the towers went down) and took a little nap because our feet were killing us. We headed up to Greenwich Village then Union Square where there were quite the entertaining street performers. We wanted to wait to do Time Square at night because it is so alive and magical (if you ignore the shoulder to shoulder crowds and people screaming obscenities at each other). American Eagle has a huge billboard there and if you buy something from their store they'll put your picture up there and Kylie for reals thinks we're famous now. We then headed back to our hotel where we were slumming it in Queens. Instead of admitting that we were cheap I like to think of it more along the lines of experiencing the culture. It was a Marriott so the hotel itself wasn't too bad, it was just the barred up windows and grafiti on the walk from the subway to our hotel (we decided to use the hotel shuttle at night :) and the very passionately vocal people that woke us up at 6 AM--ewwww! The next day we went to church, which was really cool. You expect the ward to be different because it's in the middle of Manhattan (they meet in one of the floors of the temple), but once you get inside it's just the same. I like that. We had to go to church so that we wouldn't feel so guilty about going to the Yankee's game after that. Jason's always been a Yankee fan since he was little and we also wanted to see the new stadium so we hopped on the subway headed to the Bronx. It was a fun game, especially when Posada hit a grand slam but we left after it started raining.

When we got back to Times Square the place was trashed and there were a million people (3 million to be exact), apparently we just missed the Puerto Rico Day Parade. Darn. We walked around some more to Grand Central station, the Rockefellar center, down to the Chelsea district and decided we had enough of the rain and the crowds so called it an early evening and went back to chill at the hotel. The last day we decided to rent bikes and rode around Central Park, then all the way along the Hudson River down to Battery park then over the Manhattan Bridge, around Brooklyn then back over the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a 4 1/2 hour bike ride. My quads were on fire. It was so cool seeing the city that way but I could barely walk that night. Then we were back at the airport headed to Vegas where Jason stayed to work and I hopped on a plane back to Phoenix the next day. New York is such an amazing city, it is nothing like our little Gilbert bubble, you really see it all there. I loved walking around and seeing TV shows or movies being filmed on street corners, we saw a couple different model shots, some skateboard video, a trapeze school, people practicing movie scripts in a restraunt (I really thought I was overhearing a murder confession until I realized it was a script), people throwing up on the sidewalk, so many interesting subway performers (these were my favorite-their band was such an odd mix of people but they were actually pretty good, they were there all day every day) people getting on the subway begging for money after their sob story about being homeless with AIDS, so many openly gay couples, so many openly aggressive couples, a couple confrontations that I was worried would turn into gang fights...I felt very sheltered and niave. Jason kept telling me to stop staring, but I couldn't help it. There are so many interesting people there and it's interesting to be in a place where everyone is so accepted. You would see the strangest things on the subway and nobody would bat an eye. Such a different experience and I'm so glad I got to experience it with Jason. Thank you, babe for an amazing trip and thank you to Jenz and Julene who were so nice to come play mommy to my kids for a week. Happy anniversary!