the big apple

So for the last 6 months once a month I've been going to NY for 3 days.  I been lucky enough to go with a friend, who also happens to be a coworker.  We've been attending a Women's Leadership conference there.  While I can't say I gained much out of the conference (I did learn how to not cry when you feel the urge--drink water and you physically can't drink and cry) I was able to enjoy all the big apple had to offer.

Monica and Me on one of our trips to Central Park

View of the World Trade Center Memorial from one of our hotel stays.

The last time we went was last weekend and I convinced Ty to come out this time to celebrate our third anniversary.  We've gone somewhere for the last three years--I told Ty this is going to be hard to keep this tradition up! :) We did a lot of touristy things--but we're able to gain the true New Yorker insight through the other members in the conference and their recommendations.

On Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Center)

Central Park in the background

A fun (FREE) trip that we took was riding the Staten Island Ferry.  It takes you right by the Statue of Liberty and you don't have to pay the touristy fee of $25 a person to ride a boat out to take a picture.

View leaving New York



We also visited the World Trade Center Memorial:


Per a recommendation we went to a restaurant in Chinatown for Dinner.  It was Joe's Shanghai and it's where ALL the locals go for Chinese food.  We were a little overwhelmed at first as it was packed--so much so that they had a huge 8 top table and we all just kind of sat around it--with strangers (see pic below).  We also went to order spring rolls and in really bad English our server yelled at us and said we needed the sticky buns instead.  Glad we listen, I'd never had pot stickers from a restaurant before and they were delish.  Another alarming overwhelming feeling to the restaurant was EVERYONE was eating with chopsticks--they didn't have silverware. One thing that I love about our relationship is we are competitive, challenging, and stubborn.  Neither of us wanted to ask the server if they had silverware so we looked around the table, picked up on how others were using chopsticks and made a competition to see who could use the sticks to get a piece of food in their mouth first. :) We successfully ate our entire meal with chopsticks (first time ever for both of us!).


"Uh, what did you get me into?"

The next day we walked around the city and toured the Museum of Natural History:

The inner geek history buff in me thought it'd be cool to take a picture with our favorite dinosaurs from our childhood:

Ty and his Triceratops

Me and my Brontosaurus (I thought he got the whole dinosaur and when I saw this picture and how blurry it was I wanted him to redo it, but he said he was too busy)

Attempting to take a pic with T-Rex

They also had this giant life sized Blue Whale.  It was so awesome and calming to see this massive animal:

Whenever either of us is being completely and utterly worthless lazy we like to call each other a walrus (complete with how we think they'd clap) so it was quite comical that we found a whole slew of walrus' (is that plural or is it Walrui?)

 After that it was off to take a nap in Central Park, similar to what we did in Boston:

For dinner that night we went to Eatly which was an Italian Grocery store that had 4 different restaurants, one of which was on a rooftop (so cool).  We went for dinner there and then wandered over to Times Square where we were rained out of touring Times Square.  We went the next day before we left and stumbled across this interactive billboard.  Can you find us below?


All in all it was a fun weekend, but we both said multiple times that this was not somewhere we would ever voluntarily go back too--just way too busy, expensive, and self-absorbed for our liking.

And here's a parting present for the great aunts and moms that read this blog in hopes to get the latest picture of Bug (this was sent to us from my aunt Connie while we were in NY...notice the Dowling Maroons jersey to support her favorite person ever, Jake!):

Can you tell she's a little excited about the car wash?