We got home from our NYC trip yesterday around 5:00. We had a great time, despite having to deal with me moving a bit slower. I'm still fighting this cold (that I am thinking now may actually be something like bronchitis - I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon coincidentally to "check in" on my asthma, since I went to refill inhalers last week and one of them had an expires prescription). We were able to do less walking and stay out less late than usual, but that seemed to be OK with my travel partners who were also tired. I guess I feel better in that they were having a tough time, and not pregnant, with swollen feet and suffering some kind of plague.
We parked at Alewife and took the red line to South Station, where we had time enough to kill and grabbed breakfast in the financial district
http://www.yelp.com/biz/scali-cafe-boston before waiting for our Acela. It was about 4:00 when we got into the city. We parted ways to check into our respective hotels, and then once settled Brian and I walked uptown to Carlos' hotel to meet him for dinner. His friend had suggested The Eatery in Hell's Kitchen
http://www.yelp.com/biz/eatery-new-york which was just heavenly! I had the best salmon I've had in a long time. We walked back toward Carlos' hotel via
http://donnabellsbakeshop.com/ (thanks for the suggestion Gala) and picked up desserts to have in the hotel while watching the Clone Wars Premiere. Our hotel didn't have Cartoon Network available but The Carlos' did! We had an early morning planned for Makerfaire so Brian and I decided to head back to our hotel after the show.
We were up at 7:00 AM (oof), showered and had breakfast in the Tic Toc. I know that the locals aren't nuts about this place, but it is super convenient being attached to our hotel. We've never had to wait for a table and the food is good. I had some gingerbread apple pancakes and Brian had johnny cakes w/ cheddar and bacon (not your average diner fare). We walked up to 42nd street to get the train out to Queens for the faire. Along the way a couple of mariachis got on the train, rode one stop, played one song and got off. Why don't folks do this kind of thing in Boston?
http://makerfaire.com/newyork/2011/ was a lot of fun. It was perfect weather for it, and we were there from open to close. We got to see all of the things we wanted to (minus one conflict between a musical group and a panel).
http://www.arcattack.com/ was very neat, and I was so happy that they did the Dr. Who theme song! Carlos had mentioned that this guy
http://www.whatiswhat.com/ was going to be there, and I'm so glad we were able to see his short performance. So inspiring! We caught the mentos + coke "fireworks" show, rode on the solar-powered carousel, got to see Bethany
http://cyberoptix.com/ for what we think was the first time in 13 years (we are old), caught the life-size mousetrap
http://www.lifesizemousetrap.org/ (tap dancing mice!) and checked out all of the vendors and booths along the way. I was actually not so impressed by the size and scope of the Bust Craftacular, which was what I was most excited about initially. I had been reading about the
http://www.bust.com/craftacular/craftacular-home.html in Bust magazine for years and always wanted to go to one. It has nothing on SOWA! I thought I would do a lot of shopping for family birthdays and Christmas, but I ended up only getting a couple of gifts, and they were not from the Craftacular portion of the faire. By the end of the day we were both beat, and sat waiting for Carlos to get out of his last panel in the GE solar cell phone charging area. While there we met a guy from NY who is coming to Boston soon and then moving to Cairo for 2 months (he asked us if we'd want to use his car while he was in Egypt). I also chatted with a Mom who had her son in a baby carrier, and was flipping him around from front to back and asked for our assistance in re-strapping. She gave us some advice on the carriers she liked the most with each kid at different stages. It was quite a congenial/we're all nerds here kind of vibe that reminded me of my feelings at Star Wars Celebration last summer, but I digress.
We were starving, and decided to try our luck in Times Square with dinner (I know, I know) since that is where our train from Queens let us off. Yelp gave us some suggestions, and we decided to give
http://www.johnspizzerianyc.com/index2.htm a try. I had remembered reading in Frommer's guide years ago that they were one of the supposed best pizza places in NYC, and despite this location being in Times Square it was good. On a Saturday night with no reservations we walked in and were seated within 5 minutes. Though it wasn't fast-food cheap, the 3 of us split an appetizer and pizza and had drinks and it came out to about $15 each for some of the BEST pizza I have ever had. This location (they have a few) is inside of an old church, and so we were surrounded by stained glass, old wrought iron chandeliers and were up high to watch the brick ovens. At first our server was the perfect level of attentive, but then when he came by to ask if we'd want dessert when we were still all eating our pizza we got annoyed. We finished up and headed out of there, all in all the best food experience I've had in the Times Square area. I'm so glad we went. We wandered a bit (Brian and Carlos wanted to get pictures with bad, fat costumed characters) but all we could find was an OK spiderman and of course the naked cowboy. I guess they had regretted not getting a picture with the fat superman the last time they were in the city for Makerfaire.
Though it was only about 10, we decided to call it a night. With being on my feet for most of the day and fighting a cold, not having gotten a lot of sleep the night before (I was coughing all night), having woken up at 7:00 AM *and* having chills (I wasn't sure if I had a slight fever or if it was due to a bit of a sunburn I got while waking around on the faire) I was miserable. Brian called it a night and told me I had to go back to the hotel. We grabbed some drinks and a black&white cookie and headed back (mmm, herbal tea). I wasn't quite ready for sleep but was just content to lay on our bed for a while and we got a pay-per-view movie, finally seeing Super 8. So good! I can see why people had suggested that it felt like Goonies and ET, I'm bummed I didn't see it at a drive-in theater. I slept OK that night - highly medicated with all things that were safe for me to take.
We got up yesterday earlier than I would have liked, but I just couldn't sleep anymore. Showered and packed but we had until noon to check out of the hotel and catch our train home, so we went wandering for breakfast. Brian wanted a bagel and we used Yelp again to find a place nearby. Again, midtown isn't the best place for food in the city but we found a decent place over between Herald Square and Chelsea
http://www.yelp.com/biz/bagel-maven-new-york. The bagels were good (not as good as Cafe Bagel back home) and the cream cheese was awesome. They had some amazing looking cupcakes that we considered taking to go, but decided it was too early and we didn't need anything like that. We still had some time to kill, the weather was gorgeous and my feet were feeling good so we started walking downtown a bit. We wandered by a
http://www.buybuybaby.com and headed in, our first time in one of these stores. It was good to see in person the baby bags I had put on our registry online (I haven't seen a great selection of bags anywhere else as they had in this store). We picked up some baby monster slippers as a 'babymoon' memento (from Carters). Brian found that there was a Best Buy nearby, so we were able to grab the new Star Wars complete DVD Blu-Ray set, and got some smoothies at Jamba Juice before heading back to our hotel. It was neat that we were able to make our way through a bit of Chelsea, since this is one of the areas we tend to walk a lot when we're in NYC. I knew the Chelsea Hotel had closed for now and it was just sad and strange to walk by it in this state. We chatted a bit about our weekend: how we had a good time and were ready to come home, how it was odd how little we did relative to a normal crazy NYC trip for us, how we still hadn't made it down to the East Village (we haven't managed over our last few trips). We had time to get to our room, use the bathroom, get our stuff and get over to Penn Station to grab the Acela home.
I was so glad to be in my own house yesterday! I had another night of coughing, so at least Brian could sleep on one floor and me on another. We got in and watched the Star Warriors documentary
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Warriors_%28documentary%29. It was so well done and I'm glad to have finally seen it! So many familiar faces. We don't have a lot of food in the house so we went out for dinner at Peking Garden in Lexington (Waltham is lacking in good dine-in Chinese), put our trash out for the night, and watched a bit more of the SW Blu-ray extras before bed. I coughed all night and didn't sleep much, so glad I have that appointment today! I set the alarm for 7:00 so I could shower and drop the car around the corner at my mechanic to go through and check some things out and do some routine maintenance. I'm SO GLAD I took today off, because had I not, I would have been calling in sick anyway. Brian is in the shower and we'll run some errands before my 1:30 appointment. I'm looking forward to a slow, albeit productive day at home.
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