live... from new york!

The fiancée and I left for New York City on Tuesday morning. Hopeful and deliriously excited for our little sojourn into the Big Apple, we hopped in our car, made one pit stop at Dunkin’ Donuts to fuel up on caffeine, and off we went.

Four hours later (note: from where we live the drive should take 90 minutes – max) and sounding like kids on the playground (I told you not to listen to Tom Tom! Well, update the damn thing!  But I told you not to go down here! I TOLD YOU!) we reached our hotel, a sweet, European style townhouse building on a quiet street just outside Greenwich Village.

Now it is Thursday morning as I sit down to write this, listening to the rush of traffic outside my hotel window and the wail of sirens somewhere in the distance (seriously, people are ALWAYS getting hurt in the city). We are going to visit the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum and then hit the road. Before we end our little trip, however, I wanted to write a few things down before I forget. So, here we go.  

Some highlights of our trip to the city that never sleeps:

-          Watching a basketball game on the street. Those guys were crazy good and all over forty with abs of steel (which begs the questions: is this all they DO all day?). True, only one basket was made in the twenty minutes we stopped to watch – but it probably didn’t help that the ball was half deflated and the hoops were as curved as ones you would find at a carnival. So much better than watching March Madness on TV!

-          Finding a bar at 2:30PM on our first day in the city that a) wasn’t crowded b) played awesome music. I had four bud lights, Mike housed four gin and tonics. I don’t remember what happened next.

-          Going to bed at 9:30PM and agreeing that yes, we are old.

-          Hailing a taxi!

-          Realizing that even with a map, I will never, ever be able to figure out up from down in NY. East and West? Avenues and streets? Forget about it.

-          Taking two hours to walk aimlessly through Central Park. What a gorgeous place. The walking trails were like something right out of some kind of magical labyrinth. The various lakes were beautiful,  the wildlife was plentiful, and the people watching absolutely divine.  This is but one of the fountains in the park. I only wish we would have had time to walk around the entire park, but that would take days... as it was, we covered about a 1/4 of it in our two hours! And that was more then enough for my tired feet. 

-          ALL THE DOGS. I have never seen so many different breeds of dogs in my entire life. They come out early in the morning and then hit the streets en masse around 9PM. I saw teacup Chihuahuas, Rottweilers, Golden Retrievers, Labs, mutts, fat Bassett Hounds, Huskies, Greyhounds, one HUGE Mastiff, little froo froo dogs, and one lady walking her cat. You could tell these were city dogs by the way they walked: straight ahead, some slack in the leash, with absolutely no interest in anything. Pigeons? City dog don’t give a shit. Squirrels? Boring. Other dogs? Puh-lease. (I couldn’t help but wonder how my own dogs, Finn & Jett, would do in the city… not well, I think. Not well at all)

-          Spending $235 on one dinner. Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it. 

-          SEEING MARY POPPINS LIVE ON BROADWAY! AAHHHHHHHH! Ajelkjfen2k3gngwngiwgn! KJFEIWJNNB@WNN!!!!! It was breathtaking. Fantastic. Amazing. I don’t… I don’t… I don’t have the words. This is me with my Mary Poppins ticket! So excited! And the theater was unbelievable. And our seats were fantastic (orchestra, sixth row from the front of the stage). And... And... It was awesome! So there. 

-          Navigating the city by myself just enough to find a Dunkin’ Donuts at the end of the block, and then scurrying back to the hotel before I got lost.

-          Seeing carriage horses! All of which looked happy and healthy, thank you very much Humane Society.

-          Going to the Central Park Zoo and watching the sea lion demonstration. Those suckers are SMART! They also can read body language like no other (definitely better than horses). Example: one of the trainers stood waaaayyyy up on top of the rock structure while his sea lion went flying around (think moat) the water in a big circle. JUST BY HOLDING UP A DIFFERENT FINGER the trainer was able to signal the sea lion to: jump, spin, change directions, come in, go out, and leap straight up in the air. If I come back, I want to be a sea lion.

More stuff happened, but those are the high lights. Some part of me always wondered if I could live in NYC. I’m pretty sure the answer to that is no, but hey… you never know. I mean, Carrie Bradshaw did it and look how much she accomplished!

One thing is for sure, I would never get any writing done. I’ve been here for three days and I haven’t written a word on my current manuscript! So I figured at least I would get a blog post done. I’ll leave you with my favorite song line from Mary Poppins:

If you reach for the stars all you get are the stars

But we’ve found a whole new spin

If you reach for the heavens...

You get the stars thrown in!