NYC: Birthday Edition

Since I'm fortunate enough to have been to New York several other times, I already knew that I loved it and also had an specific idea of what I wanted to do this trip: enjoy the local neighborhoods.  My guidelines for our visit were eat all of our main meals at local restaurants and walk as much as possible to explore the city.  As you can probably tell, I like to dream of living there at times.

Although our trip started out quite rough, from the moment we actually reached LaGuardia, it was a great trip.  After arriving at the airport, we took a taxi to our hotel in Midtown Manhattan.   What a sweet surprise to find that they would go ahead and let us check into our room even though it was only 9:30 AM!  It was nice to freshen up and change our clothes before beginning the day’s adventures.

The first part of the day included visiting the 9/11 Memorial (very moving and impressive), walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, eating pizza at the famous Grimaldi’s in Broklyn (and it really was delicious), meeting up with our friend Rachel from Tallahassee and walking along the Brooklyn Promenade and later through Chelsea and the High Line.  We also explored Chelsea Market a bit.

Since we were still full from lunch, we had a light dinner from the street (hot dogs) before getting ready to go to Broadway.  We saw the musical Cinderella, which was very enjoyable with classic Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes and a few modern twists.  Against our better judgment, we also took a short ride one of the rickshaw-like bicycles, which was a fun (albeit expensive) way to see Times Square at night.

The next morning we ate brunch outside at Pastis, a charming French restaurant in the Meatpacking District.  We walked around for a bit afterwards and also bought a few things in Chelsea Market.  After a subway ride uptown, we entered Central Park from the West Side and walked around for a while.  Since I was still on my "pretend I am a New Yorker" kick, I enjoyed seeing “everyday life” there like picnics on the Great Lawn, runners on the trail around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, and pick-up basketball games on the courts.  We took the subway back to Midtown and saw the play A Trip to Bountiful with Cicely Tyson and Cuba Gooding Jr.  It was a great show full of emotion and insight, with humorous touches. We did a little bit of shopping after the play and then headed back to our hotel.

Saturday night was the night we deemed my birthday night after the travel fiasco on my actual birthday.  We took a taxi to Greenwich Village and walked around Washington Square and some nearby streets.  It was right around dusk and in the 70s, and there were so many people out – it was the perfect summer evening.  From the crowd gathered around a man playing piano to a few people practicing salsa off to one side, I loved soaking it all up in Washington Square.  Afterwards, we ate dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant called Palma and then topped it off with gelato from down the street. 

Sunday morning we headed to the Upper West Side again to attend church at Redeemer Presbyterian.  We chose the West Side campus simply because they had the earliest service, but it was a neat surprise to find out when we got there that Tim Keller was preaching at this location today.  We both enjoyed church a lot and then headed just down the street to Cafe Lalo (made famous in the movie You've Got Mail) for a scrumptious brunch.  After brunch, we sauntered around the Upper West Side and then through Central Park to the Upper East Side and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We didn't have enough time to go through the Met (a Sloderbeck favorite) this visit, but we did enjoy shopping at the gift store for a few moments and just being inside the massive building again.  Then, it was back to the hotel and then off to the airport...where we thankfully flew directly to Atlanta!