New York Diary Part I: A New York Minute Blitz

We're back from our impromptu trip to The Big Apple. Since we saw so much in 3 days, I've decided to do this in parts. Otherwise, you'll never see the end of this blog post. Anyway, we arrived in New York on a speeding Jet Blue flight (4.5 hours! YAY headwinds!) on Thursday afternoon. Here's the breakdown:

The Good: M and I managed to make it into our hotel with little trouble. While the lines at the airport to catch a cab rivaled Disneyland's Finding Nemo ride, we made it to our clean, inexpensive, and quaint Holiday Inn Express hotel room in one piece. Once we grasped our barrings and realized how hungry we were, we decided to take on the NYC Subway system. Penn Station was about 3 short blocks away and was crawling with NY Rangers fans (hockey game the same night at MSG above.) The Station is huge. It took a while to figure out where the actual subway trains were. But we grabbed some MTA cards and made our way to Times Square; one stop uptown. Everything was already lit up for the evening. We swung by the famous Toys R Us, which included a giant ferris indoor ferris wheel, scoped out where we were headed for Spam-a-lot the following evening, and saw a couple of neat candy stores sweet enough to make anyone a diabetic.

The Bad: Did we mention it was spring break? For about every high school on the west coast? The streets of TS were swarming with tweens and teens on school sponsored trips. Now, I don't know about you, but my high school NEVER would have sponsored a trip like this. The cold wind and the bustling crowds I can handle. 50 million screaming teens... not so much. Oh well. We made it through most crosswalks without much trouble.

Our dinner was just okay. Especially for the price we paid. I did some research for nicer restaurants in Theater District for the night of our show. But I figured since we were there now, we might as well check out Sangria 46 and go somewhere else on Friday. Glad we made this decision because I wasn't exactly impressed. The restaurant's specialty was tapas. And since M and I love Tapa the World here in Sacto, Sangria 46 can't be half bad, right. The place was packed so we sat by the bar... which had the clumsiest bartenders. I swear 3 things shattered during the duration of our dinner. The bread was dry, service was slow, and it was LOUD! Dessert was pretty good, but again, not worth the price. Though M swore the $3 iced tea was the best thing on earth. (It better be.)

The Ugly: My cousin told me before we left that Times Square is best seen at night. It's true. It's probably the dirtiest part of town because everyone decides to pile their trash on the side of the road 3 days before it needs to be picked up. No alleys=no trash dumpsters=3 gallon trash bags on the street. Woo hoo. But since we mostly spent our time in TS at night, it really didn't matter much. But we did notice this trend throughout the city.

Also, New York traffic is kind of like LA light traffic. Except everyone is in a hurry. And the pedestrians don't do much to help the situation either. Red lights apparently mean "go faster" in this state. M and I were very glad we didn't rent a car.

Bonus: We saw the Famous Naked Cowboy. If you've never heard of the guy, Google him. Just be careful with your search parameters. Haha.

More tomorrow on Spamalot (yes, with Clay Aiken), Sardi's, and where my 401K goes to work every day.