My mom, my bff Erica and I took an awesome trip to NYC. Erica had never been so it was so fun to see her experience everything that is NYC. It is one of the most fun places to visit and we had an absolute blast. This is going to be the longest post ever and I try to recap all of our fun!
Our flight left bright and early. We had a quick layover in Washington DC where we got quite a tour of their ariport switching terminals. We grabbed a quick lunch at a flatbread place and barely made it onto our plane. The plane to NYC was a very small commuter plane that we boarded outside. We were so relieved to feel the nice cool breeze. A welcomed relief from the blazing hot temps in Dallas!
Commuter plane!
So excited to be almost to NYC!
Our first glimpse of NYC from the plane. We were so excited!
In the taxi leaving the airport!
After getting settled we rode the subway down to Central Park. We did major people watching and just took in the city. We then decided to visit the Central Park Zoo. I wanted visit it last time I was in NYC, but my feet were just too tired. The weather was fabulous and notice that Erica has a jacket on! There were people bundled up at the zoo like it was winter, but I thought it was just perfect! The zoo was small, but nice. I will note that I was disapointed that they didin't have any of the animlas for Madagascar, though the movie is set there! We ate a quick lunch there and Erica had her first NYC cupcake!
This guy was enjoying the nice weather!
We continued to walk though the park and took in all the sites. I could spend all day there, too bad we only had a few hours! We had to hurry back to the hotel via subway to get ready for our show.
We got cleaned up and headed to the Imerpial Thester to see the show "Nice Work if You Can Get It." It was incredible and I could easily see why it was nomintaed for the Tony for Best Musical and why two of the actors recieved Tonys for their preformances. We had awesome seats as we were in row Q, so close to the stage!
It was an awesome cast!
Erica sprung for a wine.....at least she got a glass with it!
After the show got out I rushed to find where the actors come out. I scored a front row spot and we patiently waited! We got picts and autographs from all the leads and last but not least Matthew Broderick came out. He was not very enthusiastic about being there, but signed autographs and Erica even got a picture with him. I didn't get a picture because he acted very annoyed about taking them.
Kelly O'Hara was an awesome leading lady next to Matthew Broderick!
She won the Tony and was so funny!
By this point we were starving so we found a ymuuy pizza place to eat. This was my piece and Erica and my mom got a veggie. It was so good. We finished off spliting a cupcake.
At this point Erica got her first glimpse of Times Square at night. It is quite a site to see! We walked along Times Square and did some shopping at The Disney Store.....then it got so late most stores were closed so we headed back to the hotel to rest up for the next big day!
Wednesday morning started bright and early with a quick breakfast at the hotel and then we grabbed a quick cab to go see the Wendy Williams show!
Our tickets to get in.
Being in the audeince was really cool! We were on TV several times! I think it is cool just to see the way TV show recordings work. I love the behind the scenes things. Wendy was really nice and so tall in person! A girl asking a question was right by me, so she was right close. Someone asked her what size shoe she was wearing and she said a 12, wow!
Wendy!
Jimmie Walked was a guest so we got his new book. There was also a shoe lady on there and we got a free pair of Naughty Monkey sandals. We have already ordered them, can't wait to see them!
After the show we needed to head over to Rockafeller Plaza for the Jimmy Fallon show that would be taping later that day. We took a cab over there and decided to eat right in Rockafeller Plaza at The Rock Cafe. We sat ourside since it was very nice outside. We got to sit right next to the stuate and fountain that you always see on TV. Where we were sitting is the ice rink in the winter. We had a very yummy burger and fries and I drank about 10 glasses of ice tea!
As were were heading out to do some shopping before it was time to get Jimmy Fallon tickets, Erica spotted Hoda! I wasn't going to stop her, but she stopped to talked to a friend and saw us looking at her and waved for us to come over to her. She was so nice! I thought it was so cool since I love to watch her and Kathy Lee in the mornings!
We then statred around and did some site seeing! St. Patrick's Cathedral is so pretty!
Amazing skyscrapers!
I went in the Lego Store just to tell Carter I did.
We didn't find any must haves when shopping.....so we headed to Jimmy Fallon for our wrist bands. Once we got our wristbands we had about an hour to kill before we could go into the studio. My mom triend to find a place to sit and Erica and I did some more shopping. We then found the best bakery, Magnoila Bakery. It was soooooo good and we also found the cutest shirts!
Yummy! We out desserts while people watching people in Rockafeller Plaza.
We then got to enter the studio with our tickets. They were very strict about taking pictures in the theater! One lady took one and they made her give them her camera and they deleated it! The show was cool to watch. The warm up guy was hilarious! Salma Hyack, Aaron Sorkin, The Jackson 4 and musical guest LMFAO were all awesome!
They did the funniest skit:
It was interesting to see how much work went into this one clip! They had to do two takes.
We then went into the NBA store and my mom and Erica found shirts for Colt and Cade and I found Carter a basketball. We then took a crazy taxi ride (we got ripped off by a creepy man that stroked his beard and talked on his phone in a foreign language) to the Chelsea Market area. We walked by the cool brownstones there and walked through the Chelsea Market. It's such a cool area, too bad a lot of things were closing by the time we got there.
We did get a yummy cakeball from a bakery there.
We then walked along the highline where they had a band playing and people dacincg. Such a cool atmosphere! We walked through the meat packing district, then grabbed a cab back to our part of town. We ran into the biggest Old Navy I have even seen and walked away with some good deals. By this point we were famished and so thristy! We walked around looking for the restruant someone told us was good called Lucky's, but after walking forever couldn't find it, so we ended up at this other Irish Pub that was very good......I once again drank like 10 glasses of iced tea! After a yummy meal we makde our wat back to the hotel (barely) and went to sleep to prepare for our next big day!
The next morning we woke up bright and early so we could walk by the Today show on our way to Kelly! Live. We saw broadcaster George Stepanopolis walking by.
Then Taylor Kitsh walked out.
Then Grant Hill.
We had to quickly leave so we could make it to Kelly! Live. We took a cab who took us to the wrong place, so we had to run to get to the studio because we were afriad we would miss out! After a huge fiasco, we ended up with really good seats!
See how close we were! This studio was totally different as you didn's have to turn off your phone and could take pictures the whole time the show taped, it was so weird, but cool!
Michael Strahan was the guest host and he was really funny! Kelly was good too and SO tiny! She seemed like such a nice person that really loves her job.
We got quite the treat with Matthew McCaughney as the guest. He talked about getting married in Austin and we yelled and I waved a hook em horns and he turned around a gave me a hook em horns back! After he was on there was a pet psychic and a cooking segment with Ashanti. We thought that was the end, but we got another treat! They did a segment that was going to be aired August 27 with guest Bradley Cooper! I love him. When he came out he shook my hand. :) So cool! (yes I am starstruck).
He was so cute and so nice!
He even brought his dog Charlotte!
I thought it was interesting they still use cue cards like these!
Upon leaving the studio and chatting with some poparatzi (who were so nice and gave told us which subway to take) we hopped onto the subway to Battery Park to get on the ferry for the Statue of Liberty. We had an awsome boat ride there, but were disappointed when we go there to find out we couldn't climb up the statue as they were doing remodeling. So we snapped a few pictures and got on the ferry to go to Ellis Island. We got off ay Ellis Island and did a quick tour and then hopped back on the ferry. We were happy to fianlly get off the boat, exiting it was quick an adventure!
We then walked up Wall Street and then to the 9/11 memorial site. This statue is one of the only things that remailed unharmed outside of the World Trade Center.
There is something so eeie about walking down the street that people were running for their life on, like some kind of nightmare. I thought about all who suffered and were lost.
Next we were going to head to Canal Street and then Little Italy to meet my friend Heather (who lives in Hoboken) and her 2 boys for lunch. We asked a guy how far it was and he said it wasn't far, just a 10 minute walk. Well, it must have been a 10 minute run becuase we walked for what seemed like forever. We thought we would never get there! We did and were so happy to sit down to some yummy Italian food with Heather, Trip and Ashton!
We then took a (ripoff, rude taxi driver who yelled at my mom) taxi ride to Times Square so we could go into the Toys R Us. I took this picture of Lego Hulk and sent it to Carter.
Tons of Ninjagos, Carter's favorite!
We then had a yummy cupcake at Crumbs!
I got a chocolate milkshake cupcake. It was good, but I liked the one my mom got better!
After the cupcake we ad just enough energy to go to the Gap Anchor Store. It was huge and gad every item Gap carries at this point. So cool! I found some good deals and would have probably found more, but they kicked us out because they were closing.
I was pretty done for the night, but my mom was still going! She was determined we needed to walk to to M&M Store and it was not close. I drug along, but was about spent. She bought some treats for Carter and Colt and then we eaded back to the hotel. We all passed out when we got the hotel and the next morning we headed home. It was a great trip and we are already talking about when we are going to do it again!
