New York - Part 2

Day 3 cont.: There was one item I left off of Day 3 from the previous entry... Monday night Trevor rented a Mini Cooper convertible to give us a driving tour of the entire island. We had such a great time and it was such a neat way to see the city. He drove us up through Harlem (yes, three white kids in a yellow mini made it through Harlem... what were we thinking?). From there we pretty much hit every major area on our way south to the Brooklyn bridge.

Our ride

Street shot (I'm no Harper Smith photographer, but that ain't a bad shot)

Day 4: After brunch, Ryan and I decided to give the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island idea one more shot... clearly we didn't learn from the first time. We met up with Rick and Adam at Battery Park and found a line even longer than the one we saw the first time we tried this adventure. So, the closest we came to the Statue of Liberty is this... that little stick-like figure next to Adam's shoulder is the Statue of Liberty and in between Rick and Ryan is Ellis Island.



After another unsuccessful try at being patriotic, we took Adam and Rick over to Wall Street, hit up Bloomingdales, and then went into Greenwich Village to have New York's #1 pizza. This was probably the highlight of Ryan's trip - not because of the pizza, but because he had a great star sighting - Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini). Of all the famous people Ryan has seen on the streets, he said this is the one person he couldn't look at and say oh, that's James Gandolfini, just another regular guy. Rather, he just kept thinking to himself - oh man, I'm standing next to Tony Soprano - I better not say anything stupid or I'll get whacked.



After dinner we headed uptown a little ways to the Macy's on 34th - the biggest store in the country (maybe even the world). This store is 9 stories high and covers an entire block. It's huge. It's heaven. As we were shopping and making our way up to floors 6, 7, 8 and 9, we noticed that the escalators were a little different than we're used to - they were made of wood! Totally old school. I think it's awesome they haven't changed them.

Once Trevor got off work, he met up with us to go to the Empire State Building. Because it was nearly 9 p.m., we thought most of the crowds would have already gone through... we were so wrong. We waited an hour and a half to get up to the top. It was not fun, but the complaining stopped once we made it to the observation deck.

Ryan listening to the audio guide that points out all the major areas and landmarks in the city.

New York at night

Day 5: After a long night on the Empire State Building, we slept in on Wednesday before heading to a matinee of Jersey Boys. Mandy's dad hooked us up with some great tickets and we loved the show. An absolute must see.

Also on Wednesday we ate at Mandy's favorite place - Angelos, in Little Italy. OMG - fabulous. It was so yummy and had a great ambiance. After walking around Little Italy, we headed to Canal Street where they sell all the knock offs. Of course I had to get a purse, and was very proud of myself for talking the lady down to $25 from $40. Don't mess...

Day 6: Thursday was unlike any other in New York City... because we actually left the city and went up to the Long Island Sound where Trevor took us sailing. For the last few months he's been taking a sailing class every Saturday and just got his license. I was way impressed with his skills. Ryan, Adam and Rick helped him man the Jib (the front sail), but Trevor pretty much ran the whole show - and no one went overboard.

My sailing shoes... I was so prepared and looked so cute.

After a day of sailing, we raced home to get ready for the Yankees vs. Red Sox game. We missed the first inning because of some ticket drama... basically the tickets we got through StubHub were invalid and we couldn't use them (we got copies of originals). Luckily, StubHub had a ticket booth on site and they gave us new (and better) seats than we had before. One we got in, I was starving and went off to find some decent food... not at easy task at this field. It's a good thing they're building a new stadium cause this old Yankee Stadium is pretty old and nasty.

Red Sox won 7-0. It was truly a great day.