Day 1: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
- Up, up, and away.
- A genuine NYC cab ride (their first) from JFK.
- Foodie-geek-out at the Madison Square Park food stalls.
- Gawk at the stunning range of hyper-fancy baby strollers at some kiddie-fest in the park.
- A subway ride (their first) to Downtown Brooklyn.
- Purchase discount ticket for "West Side Story".
- A failed attempt to eat at Patsy Grimaldi's. (The line was down the block.)
- Ice cream.
- A vigorous walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (headed upstream against mobs of people dressed in vivid breast-cancer-awareness pink).
- A walk through China Town.
- Late lunch at Great NY Noodle Town.
- Early dinner (all that walking burns a lot of calories): pizza, hot dogs (from a street vendor), and more ice cream.
- Sleep like the dead.
- A brisk walk from Chelsea to Midtown, passing through Times Square (with its kiddie-mind-blowing glitz).
- Bagels with our dear friend Tory and her family in their 27th floor apartment (with its kiddie-mind-blowing view).
- Kids: Spend the afternoon with a genuine New York City babysitter (with a genuine New York City hourly rate), going to see the aforementioned "West Side Story" and traipsing around the theater district.
- Parents: Spend the afternoon and evening watching "Gatz", the (deservedly) highly acclaimed six-hour, word-for-word theatrical rendition of "The Great Gatsby", in which the aforementioned dear-friend-Tory plays the part of Daisy. (During breaks, we tally the famous people in the audience and gawk at the stunning range of hyper-fancy eyewear.)
- Parents: Dinner (during the mid-play dinner-break) at Momofuku.
- Everybody: Sleep like the dead
- A leisurely traipse along the High Line.
- Pizza.
- A slog through the West Village, during which the gals begin to unravel (understandably so).
- An attempt at shopping on lower Broadway, during which the gals kind of lose their marbles (understandably so).
- A round-trip on the Staten Island Ferry, during which the kids regain their marbles and become giddily—almost violently—happy (at which point, the adults start to lose their marbles).
- A playground break, during which we listen to genuine New York City parents discuss the complicated logistics of genuine New York City parenting.
- Chinese for dinner, with a good gaggle of friends.
- Times Square at night (during which the glitz is even more kiddie-mind-blowing), including a ride on three-story-tall Ferris wheel inside the mega-Toys-'Я'-Us.
- Sarah spots Patti LaBelle at Mario Batali's Eataly.
- Sleep like the dead.
- Breakfast from a street cart.
- Meet with friends in Central Park. The gals traipse across the rocks, marveling at how un-flat everything is. (Parks in New Orleans pretty much stick to two dimensions.)
- Pack up.
- Off to the airport (during which the cab-driver discusses the tranquility that can be found by listening to one's own heartbeat).
- Home again, home again, jiggety-jog. (Yay!)
- Sleep like the dead.
In the reverse we call that a BABE run. Big Apple to Big Easy. I wish you the sleep the sleep of the contented and the wicked.
ReplyDeleteWe took our son to NYC (stayed in Brooklyn) earlier this year & it blew his mind, too. By the time we left he was rockin' the R train t-shirt everywhere ("Queens to Brooklyn") and actually told a crowd of people he was FROM Brooklyn. Let's just say, he embraced it fully. I couldn't be prouder. One weird thing we did with friends? SpaCastle in Flushing. Shockingly kid friendly. Google it.
ReplyDeleteWow! No grass grew under your feet during that trip!
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