Manhattan

Thanks to the book on Woody Allen's work that I just finished I am hankering to go back to NYC more than ever. I decided to watch Manhattan Saturday night while the boys worked on music. Manhattan is truly one of my favorite films and always holds up for me under repeated viewing. I couldn't help but laugh out loud, and as always the intro left me breathless. It is probably one of my most favorite things captured on film, just beautiful. I always had "Rhapsody In Blue" running through my head as we explored the streets of Manhattan ourselves.

New York City, Day 3

So, on day three of our trip we started our touring at St. Paul's Chapel, where George Washington went to service while he was President. After the bridge and a stop at Starbucks to warm up and use the restroom, we made our way up to Greenwich Village. First stop was Washington Square, where we had a sit, and then wandered around a bit lost. When we got our bearings we made our way to John's Pizzeria on Bleecker Street. This pizzeria was in Woody Allen's Manhattan, and you can even see the booth we sat in in the movie scene! Woody connection aside it is one of the oldest NYC pizzerias, and our pie was delicious! After fueling up we wandered a bit more, and made our way up to Chelsea. We saw the Chelsea Hotel, and as we strolled down 23rd Street we passed Kyra Sedgwick out on shopping errands. How exciting! After our little tour of Chelsea we hopped on the subway and headed up to Rockefeller Center, as we had somehow managed to gloss over it when we were a mere block or two away from it the day before. And after that we managed to figure out the confusing weekend subway schedule to get back to our hotel. We walked several blocks along Central Park West from the subway station towards our hotel and took a lovely last look at Downtown towering over the park grounds. Can't wait till we have the opportunity to go back!

Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, Day 3

I decided to do this as it's own little post because these are some of my favorite pictures. Day 3 we got up, got ready, and walked a couple blocks uptown to Zabar's where I grabbed some souvenirs, and we grabbed some coffee, juice, and croissants from their cafe. We headed back to the hotel to drop off the stuff and eat our breakfast, and then we popped back out and took the subway down to Fulton St. We visited St. Paul's Chapel, which I'll leave to a separate post, and from there we headed to the Brooklyn Bridge. We were really sore from all the walking we did the day before, so we just walked up to the first set of arches and back. It was still a really great experience though. Next time it would be really great to cross all the way starting from Brooklyn. P.S.- Finally figured out how to get good resized pics from flickr, ha. Sorry about the previous pics quality.

New York City, Day Two

Our second day in New York started off just a few blocks from our hotel on the Upper West Side. We strolled our way over to 72nd St. & Central Park West to see the Dakota building and then started our visit to Central Park at Strawberry Fields. We worked our way through a small section of the grounds, eventually coming out on 5th Avenue. From there we trekked all the way to the East River for a very special view of the Queensboro Bridge, from the spot made famous in Woody Allen's Manhattan. We stopped for lunch at a diner on Madison Avenue and then went up to Bryant Park to see the Public Library. Our last stop of the day was Times Square.

New York City, Day One

As I mentioned below I finally got some of the pictures from our NYC trip uploaded this weekend. I whittled my massive 500+ photos down to a Reader's Digest 90+. Here are some of my favorite's from Day One, which we spent at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Ellis Island was one of my favorite parts of our trip, and I literally photographed almost everything up to 3/4 of the way through when I realized my battery was almost dead! Don't worry, I'm not posting all those, ha. I plan on posting more on the rest of our trip this week, but if you're impatient you can view them all here. Side note- the postcard featured is for the S.S. Celtic which is the ship that my family came over on in 1909, and the names shown includes my great-grandfather, Thomas Tumilson.

Start Spreading The News

Josh and I are officially going to New York City in three weeks. Just a quick jaunt to the city that never sleeps, but I am so excited. I've never been to a big city. I mean, I've been to Dallas and Houston, but not for extended stays and they just don't compare to the impressiveness of the 5 boroughs. I've wanted to go to New York since I was, oh probably 14 or 15. And I'm finally going. It's almost unbelievable to me. But it's happening, and soon at that. I made our flight and hotel reservations this weekend, but other than that I only have lots of little ideas floating around in my head as to what to do and see. I got this awesome map book at Borders Monday night, it's very small, but has 50+ detailed maps. Each map covers a different thing, like the subways, buses, museums, restaurants split up by neighborhood, Central Park, etc. So they can give you lots of detail without it all being combined into one incredibly confusing map.

We're staying on the Upper West Side, just 2 blocks west of Central Park. There's a subway stop 2 blocks north and 2 blocks south from us at Hotel Belleclaire. We'll be taking one of those lines down to Battery Park to catch the ferry out to Ellis Island. I can't wait to see my Great-Grandpa's name on the Immigrant Wall of Honor. We'll go to Strawberry Fields and the Dakota. The Public Library and Bryant Park are on the list of stops. And of course, 30 Rock, ha. And I'm on a mission to find this spot from Woody Allen's Manhattan. Thanks to my handy book of maps, I've narrowed down the area, and just have to do a bit more research before I'll hopefully be taking my own picture sitting on that bench.

I'm going shopping this weekend for some stuff for the trip. I'm hoping to find some remnants of the winter stock on sale racks. And Stephanie gave me a tip about these super warm thermals that she gets for snowboarding. That should definitely help me keep warm on our turns around the wintry town. Need some new shoes for the trip too. I don't think my canvas Converse will keep my tootsies warm or dry enough.

The only downside of this trip is that the Carlyle didn't update their calendar quick enough and I'm now set to leave town just 12 hours before Woody Allen performs his Monday night show with the Eddy Davis New Orleans Band. It's no one's fault, but it is a big blow to my anticipation to know that I'm barely missing out on one of my biggest dreams of seeing him perform. This has made me determined to start saving for our next NY trip when I get back from this one.