we heart nyc

I'm a bad blogger again! Being home sick today allowed me to read and catch up on all my fav blogs. Here's a recap of our New York City weekend. I tried to make it short, but it's a long one:

Thursday
I met Rob at Whole Foods for dinner in El Segundo and we stocked up on greens, since we had an intuition that we wouldn't be eating many veggies in NYC. After our great dinner, we experienced a slew of hiccups that eventually were resolved the following day upon arriving to our apartment rental. This is what happened:

- First, we were going to leave our apartment rental deposit in the form of a check so the check could be shredded upon our departure from NYC. Well, I realized when we got to LAX that I forgot our checkbook at home. Not only did we have to withdraw a bunch of cash to cover the rental and the deposit, but we had to be hopeful that the woman we rented the apartment from is honest and will return our full deposit (we should receive a check this week for the full deposit amount - still kinda crossing our fingers).

- Second, we told our shuttle that we were departing from Virgin America. When we went to check in at Virgin America, we were told our flight had already departed and we missed our flight. Oops...I then realized that we were actually departing from Delta (we flew home on Virgin America).

- Next, when we checked our luggage at the Delta terminal, we discovered our luggage was 7 pounds too heavy. Ugh...thank goodness I packed a gigantic purse that could hold 7 pounds worth of crap.

- Finally, we make it on the plane. Barely speaking to one another from the stress that just happened, but we were on the plane and ready for a nap.

- We eventually land in NYC, speaking, and ready for an incredible trip. Then I called our apartment rental woman and left a voicemail. She didn't return our call for 45 minutes! In that 45 minutes, I was so bummed! Not only are hotels expensive in the city, but it was the NY Marathon. Fat chance we would even find a hotel. Luckily, she eventually called back. Phew!

Friday
We dropped our stuff off at the apartment (located in the Upper East Side) and I had just a few minutes until my Sex and the City tour departed. It almost left without me, but fortunately for me, they were running a few minutes late. Seriously, this was the best $39 ever spent! The highlight was definitely visiting Carrie's apartment stoop. We also:

• Shopped at The Pleasure Chest where Charlotte bought her 'Rabbit'
• Enjoyed a cupcake at the Magnolia Bakery
• Visited the church where Samantha met "The Friar"
• Saw the gallery in SoHo where Charlotte worked
• Saw the furniture store where Aidan designed his tables and chairs
• Drank a cosmo at Aiden and Steve's bar, Scout, in real life the bar is Onieal's Speakeasy

As I was enjoying my cupcake all by myself, I noticed another girl about my age alone. I approached her and it turns out she is traveling alone for 3 1/2 months! She's from Australia and has already been to Italy, Paris, and New York. She'll be visiting LA in about a week. I'm hoping to meet up with her again.

This is Carrie's apartment stoop!

Jasmine and I at "Scout"

While I was enjoying the tour, Rob met up with a former colleague for lunch near Lincoln Center. I couldn't bribe or convince Rob to go with me, but I had a great time alone surprisingly and maybe met a new email pal. After the tour, Rob and I met up and took a quick stroll through Central Park and then headed back to the apartment for a nap before the big Duran Duran concert.

The view from the living room of the apartment

The living room

Rob is a big Duran Duran fan and the guys didn't disappoint! Even Donald Trump was rockin' out! I think one of the Olsen twins was rockin' out behind the Donald too. Duran Duran played every song from their new album, Red Carpet Massacre, and then of course the classics we all grew up with. We didn't leave ourselves enough time to grab dinner, but we quickly discovered (or at least I did) that there isn't anything like a fresh hot dog from a corner hot dog stand. Yummy! Obviously, no effort was taken to count points on our trip. After the concert, some friends from the agency we both used to work at were in town so we met up with them for some cocktails and dancing. We went to this club called Cielo where they played all electronic music. Not even a few cocktails could get me in the mood to dance to that junk. We had a great time though. So great that we made it back to our apartment just before sunrise. Seriously, nothing like going to bed at 4am (not really though).



Saturday
We slept in until nearly noon and made our way to Nick's Pizza, according to Yelp, the best pizza place on the Upper East Side. It was actually really delicious. After lunch, we literally just roamed around holding hands and snuggling through the West Side, Upper West Side, and Lincoln Center area. We walked and walked the entire day. As we were making our way back to the apartment to get ready for Legally Blonde, we walked by a Crumbs Bakeshop. Since I've never treated myself to a Crumbs visit in LA, I had to have a cupcake from the original Crumbs location on the Upper West Side. Rob talked some sense into me and convinced me to wait to enjoy the chocolate brownie goodness until after dinner. Again, with not enough time to eat dinner at a restaurant (turns out this was our cheapest NYC trip yet because we hardly ate out) we grabbed a hot dog near the theater. I wasn't about to miss one second of Legally Blonde. It was the best show ever. It even beat seeing Mary Poppins in London. I'll even admit to crying at the end of the first act. It was so great! The music, the dancing, the costumes, the sets - they were all so perfect! I'm praying the show comes to Los Angeles so I can see it again (I'll host a "Pink Party" for the event). I was even a sucker and paid $50 for a t-shirt and official program. Perhaps the perfect way to end a perfect evening was with our Nick's leftovers and the chocolate brownie cupcake.

Yum!

Sunday
We woke up early to grab some breakfast at a nearby cafe that was popular with the locals in the neighborhood (can't remember the name). After breakfast, the woman we rented the apartment from stopped by so Rob could help her navigate her way to better understanding her new MacBook. While Rob was in heaven showing-off his Apple knowledge, I took a quick nap to try to fight off a cold that started coming on the night before. By 11:30am, we were off to meet some family who live in New Jersey. We meet Rob's cousin Karen, her husband Michael and their sons Jorden and Kaenen in Little Italy. We ate (or over ate) at Grotta Azurra. The food was delicious and I seriously ate so much my stomach felt like it was expanding. I thankfully digested while shopping at Century 21 with Karen. This department store was a freakin' nightmare! Fortunately for Rob. he didn't have to experience what would have been his H-E-L-L! I tried to rummage through the jam packed racks and fight off the crowds of aggressive New York shoppers. I walked away with a pair of $30 gold/silver metallic flats. I'm really happy with my purchase and I've already worn my new shows a couple of times, but Century 21 was almost my H-E-L-L, so I would have liked to come away with more. On the other hand, our luggage couldn't accommodate any more weight, so it was meant to be.

The family: Rob, me, Jorden, Michael, Karen, Kaenen

After saying our good-byes to our East Coast family, Rob and I did some more roaming through Greenwich Village and Soho. I was very excited for the evening to arrive and to meet up with Jolene! We picked Jolene up at her swanky hotel in Midtown. We headed to Serendipity to put our name on the waiting list. Rob and I stopped by Serendipity the day before to see about grabbing a quick frozen hot chocolate treat and the wait was almost 3 hours. Sunday evening however the wait was only 45 minutes. We ate dinner at Patsy's Pizzeria (thank you WeMo for knowing the name of the restaurant) that was really great. Even though my tummy was still sore from eating too much earlier in the day, I couldn't resist a couple slices of pizza. We hurried through dinner so we could make it to our ultimate destination, Serendipity's frozen hot chocolate. We also ordered the humble pie sundae (peanut butter pie). Wow! Both were incredible! Our recommendation is to start with the frozen hot chocolate and then move on to the humble pie sundae.

Toyota sponsored the NYC Marathon...we had to take a picture since we met and fell in love working on Toyota

Serendipity - Yum!

After dessert, we put Jolene in a cab so she could get some sleep for her work week and we strolled along Park Avenue and then went to Rockefeller Center. I really wanted to ice skate, but it was getting late and we had to be up the next morning at 4:15am to catch our flight. We ended up having a quick cocktail over looking the entire city at the Rainbow Room. Again, another perfect ending to a perfect day.

Monday
We had to be up super early in order to make the journey to JFK. Our flight left at 7:30am and we literally arrived to JFK at 7:10am. I'm actually surprised they let us on the flight. Leave it to us to barely make our flight. We were told our luggage would likely arrive to LAX on the next Virgin America flight in the afternoon, but it ended up on our flight and we left LAX with our giant 50-pound luggage. After a quick lunch at Togo's, Rob went to work and I went home to write a paper. I opted to catch up on some much needed sleep and ended up submitting my paper via email and missing class. It was an incredible whirlwind weekend. Though it started off a bit bumpy, it turned out to be a dream weekend. We saw friends, family, Sex and the City hot spots, Duran Duran, and Legally Blonde - it really was the perfect NYC trip!

Rob is almost done creating a slide show with all of our pictures to some perfectly selected music. I'll upload it as soon as he's done.