We had a fun, short trip to the city this week. Coming home on Saturday rather than Sunday has been great, allowing us to settle into normal life slowly.
We took the Acela out from South Station on Thursday (11:15). After weighing our options, we decided to park at Alewife and leave the car there for a couple of days and take the red line straight to the train. Apparently you can no longer park overnight at Riverside, and the appeal of being right at the red line was nice. The train was roomy and fast and we are so glad we finally gave it a try. We checked into the hotel (our room was great - a gorgeous view of the river!), the best one yet that we've had the New Yorker. We had a late lunch downstairs at the Tic Toc, and then started wandering. One of the things we love about going to NYC is it's walkability. We checked out some fabric stores in the Fabric District where we were staying, made our way to the
http://www.grandcentralterminal.com/index.cfm to pick up some food for a light picnic dinner, caught the exhibits at the
http://fitnyc.edu/3662.asp (those crazy Japanese!) and continued to wander, wander. Our initial plan was to lay low on Thursday night and catch Black Swan across the street from our hotel. We went on a walk to find some dessert to no avail (the place we wanted to hit was closed), so after cake at the Tic Toc we returned to our room having missed the last showing at the Theater. Who knew that you could pay to watch some in-theater movies in your hotel room?! It cost less than we would have paid for 2 tickets, and we were able to watch The Black Swan from the comfort of our hotel room bed. I really enjoyed it, but could have done without the squicky saw-like picking at hangnails and such. I'm glad that we were finally able to see it.
After Saturday's breakfast at the Tic Toc (convenient, good food) we walked around Chelsea, hitting some thrift stores and lingerie stores that I had found suggested online. We stumbled upon the
http://www.shoplimelightmarketplace.com/index.html and had a fun time wandering through, picking up some small whoopie pies from Wannahaveacookie (so good!). I bought a cute scarf at a shop upstairs that had small skulls and silver thread woven throughout, so subtle you'd have to really look to notice them ($15). It wasn't until later that afternoon that I realized that this site used to be the Goth Club
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/realestate/commercial/17limelight.html that we had come extremely close to attending a few times. Weird! We stopped to warm up and eat our cookies later at a Starbucks we stumbled on (our deal at the New Yorker included some free food at the Tic Toc and $15 worth of Starbucks credit). Our thrifting and lingerie window shopping continued as we made our way over to the East Village, SOHO and Greenwich Villiage. I came close to buying a gorgeous peacock green slip from
http://www.journelle.com/?gclid=CMqWuNa5hacCFUbf4Aodx2C4cw, but neither location had it in my size. In the end, I caved at
http://www.agentprovocateur.com/ - they are turning into my stereotypical travel memento. For lunch we were going back and forth with hot dogs
http://www.crifdogs.com/ , mac and cheese
http://www.smacnyc.com/home.html and pizza. The birthday boy was more in a pizza mood, so we went back to
http://www.johnsbrickovenpizza.com/ who we loved on one of our previous trips. We strolled back to our hotel and rested a bit before heading to see Spiderman
http://spidermanonbroadway.marvel.com/ . We found dinner first at
http://www.bensdeli.net/ (wandering from the hotel to the theater, there isn't much that isn't a cheesy chain in this district). I loved the pickles and cole slaw and it made me miss Joan and Ed's Deli in Natick. Brian's latke was awesome. The corned beef w/ Russian sandwich that I got was dry and uneventful. I was in the mood for a Ruben but it was not to be in this very kosher restaurant. You can't win them all.
So, Spiderman. I really wanted to love this show. The aerials were amazing. The sets were amazing. The story was so odd, and I don't know what they were thinking. The songs were all over the place and forgettable. I loved Mary Jane and Peter's voices and how they worked together, and Arachne (yes, of the mythological type) was a proper Diva. I loved two of the dance numbers (one w/ the military and one with Arachne's high-heeled lady spiders), but I did not love this show. I'm glad we went, but I don't think I'd go again. Brian and I left the show feeling odd, and talked through the night trying to figure out what they were thinking or how they could have made it different.
We got up on Saturday morning and had a continental breakfast (free) at the hotel, and packed up to get to
http://www.dylanscandybar.com/?gclid=CNGktry8hacCFUlN4AodpEXrfw where the
http://www.empirecitygarrison.com/ was trooping to promote the Star Wars M&Ms. It was weird to be at a troop with no armor, but nice to see some friends (and Brian picked up a cute M&M Boba 'bank' at the store to add to his collection). We spent about a half-hour there before we had to head back to the hotel, get our luggage and walk over to Penn Station for our train. We picked up lunch in the station at
http://www.zaro.com/ and grabbed a couple of black and whites, which are apparently the thing to buy there (so good) and headed home. The Acela once again was a magical experience, and we think the way we will travel to NYC from now on if able. I'm more than 3/4 of the way through reading the Happiness book and am loving it! It's extremely inspirational and I'm excited to think about doing a similar thing in my own life.
We got home and were craving Mexican food (there weren't good options in NYC that we were able to find) so we grabbed dinner, came home and lounged with the cats. Poor Mal was fine when we got home but at some point he hurt himself or got something in his eye - one eye is half closed but it's not red, not oozy and he's not babying it. We're going to keep an eye on it and see how he looks, and hopefully can avoid a vet visit.
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