New York City Part II {My NYC Birthday}

If you missed Part I of my NYC recap, you can find that here.

Our third day in New York (May 6), also happened to be my 32nd birthday! I never in a million years imagined that I would ever spend a birthday in New York, but it happened and it was pretty awesome! Thanks to Jim, my mom, my sister, and all of Karen's family for making this trip happen for us!

We decided we didn't want to waste the day, so we registered for a core Barre class at 9:30 in the morning. That way we knew we wouldn't opt to sleep in. The Barre class was killer! But the instructor was super nice and welcoming, and even though we felt like fish out of water (um, hello room full of young, skinny women), it was a great start to our day. Everyone in the class even received a free gift from a company called Sweaty Betty - a reusable water bottle and a pair of grip barre socks!

 

After the class, we grabbed some coffee at Starbucks and headed back to the apartment to enjoy our drinks on the rooftop patio before freshening up for the rest of the day. I love rooftop patios and the one at Graham's apartment was fantastic. I only wish we had spent more time up on it during our visit!

Once showered and dressed, we headed out to find a place to get manicures and pedicures. It doesn't take long to pass a salon in New York offering just that! For $30, we got our fingers and toes done! We grabbed another coffee after that (what a treat to drink hot coffee whenever we wanted without interruption!), and then went back to the apartment to relax and change before our plans for the evening.

We only ended up seeing one Broadway show during our trip, but we couldn't have seen a better one! Graham was kind enough to gift us tickets (Thanks Graham!!) to The Book of Mormon, and oh man, what a show! We laughed so hard, we cried, and our seats were amazing! Honestly, we could have seen any show and probably enjoyed it as Karen and I both love live theatre, but The Book of Mormon was fantastic. I'd see it again in a heartbeat. It's not a show for everyone though, and you have to have a sense of humour and an open mind as there's a lot of profanity and inappropriateness, but if you're ok with that, then you'll probably enjoy the show.

After the show, we walked over to Times Square. On the way, we passed a Baked by Melissa and grabbed a half dozen of mini cupcakes because you have to have cake on your birthday! It's so surreal to see these places you've seen on TV and in movies a million times in person. I was expecting Times Square to be a lot bigger and was surprised by how small the little grand stand seating area was. The buildings covered in big, bright screens reminded me a lot of Vegas. We enjoyed our cupcakes (which were delicious, but I easily could have eaten a dozen just on my own!) in Times Square, taking in the energy all around us.

Eventually we started walking again until we found somewhere not too busy to get dinner at. We ended up at an Irish Pub where I got a burger and fries and Karen got some type of meat pie. We were famished! We also split a bottle of wine, chatted with some other friendly tourists, and then made our way home on the subway somewhere around one in the morning.

It was the perfect birthday, and getting to spend the whole day with my best friend in New York City was the icing on the cake! It's a birthday I will never forget, and definitely made turning another year older that much easier!

Stay tuned...Part III coming up next! 

New York City Part I

Hello out there! How have I been home from my New York trip for a week and a half already?! a whole month?! It's funny, because before we left, Karen and I both thought we'd have quite a bit of down time while in New York. Yes, we were going to New York, and yes there is so much to see and do there, but a bit of the trip was also just about getting away, spending time together and relaxing without having any parental responsibilities. HELLO no babies crying in the middle of the night!!, although we both often thought we heard crying in the middle of the night! We also had to be home periodically during the day to take out her brother's dog that we were dog-sitting. But despite all this, our days were jam-packed and when we finally settled in for the evening, we were too exhausted to do much more than watch Parenthood on Netflix (yay for American Netflix!). You guys, I barely even read while I was gone! I took three books with me and I got about 3/4 of a way through one. But I have no regrets! It just means I didn't blog about our trip in real time like I had originally planned.

So! I'm breaking my week long trip to NYC into four parts just to keep the length of each post down. This post will cover the first two days we were there. Enjoy!

The day we left, we had to be at the airport around 5:30am! Which means Karen's parents picked my up at 4:45am. Which also means I got exactly 2 hours of sleep that night because 1) I was up till one in the morning packing, and 2) I was so worried I would sleep through my alarm that I had a hard time falling asleep. I woke up around 4am, quickly got dressed and snuck into Sully's room so I could dream-feed him and kiss him goodbye. There was a very, very good chance that that would be my last time nursing him.

Once we got to the airport and made it through security (Karen may or may not have been flagged and search) we grabbed ourselves some coffee and breakfast sandwiches. The first plane to Toronto was pretty empty, and after being asked by another passenger to "keep our voices down" (seriously!), we moved to the back of the plane where we each got a row to ourselves to stretch out on. The flight from Toronto to New York was also quite empty, and only a short one hour flight. We both felt a little queasy from that flight which didn't help our motion sickness on the craziest cab ride I have ever taken. Cab drivers in New York are no joke! It's just as insane out there as they show on TV. But we survived, making it to her brother, Graham's apartment around 6pm.

Karen's brother's apartment is right across the street from Trader Joe's! This is my all-time favourite store in the US and so we wasted no time on heading over there to stock up on some groceries for the week. I've been to several different Trader Joe's in the past, but I have never been to such a busy one. The checkout lines wrapped around the store! They even hire people to stand with signs saying "line starts here" and "middle of line". Crazy! The line's move fast though and we were out of there pretty quickly.

We didn't venture far that night, and I apparently took no photos that evening. We met up with one of Graham's friends, who also happens to live in the same building, and walked the dogs to Madison Square Park where there is a little fenced off dog park.

We headed to bed early so that we would be well-rested for our first real day in NYC. Tuesday morning we had tickets to a taping of The View, but you still have to arrive at a certain time and line-up before you are guaranteed a seat since they hand out more tickets than they have seats. Luckily we made it in, where we were given free snacks and apple juice. The guest-host was Raven Symone (remember her from That's So Raven?! No? Am I dating myself?) and the guests were football star turned author and reality-show star, Deion Sanders, and chef Steve Martorano. Neither of us are huge fans of The View, but we wanted to go to at least one taping of a talk-show and I'm so glad we went! It's really cool to see how they tape a show (this one isn't taped live and in fact, they do two tapings a day!).

 

We were there for about an hour and on the way out we got a free cookbook and free tickets to a Dangerfield's comedy club for that night. Since the studio was about half a block away from Central Park, we wandered over just to peek around, but headed back shortly after to change and take the dog out. We also popped into a Barre/Yoga studio near the apartment and bought a weekly pass to try out some classes. 

 

We went to Dangerfield's that evening for 8 pm and after we got off the Subway and walked the rest of the way, something tripped me on the sidewalk. As I was tripping, I realized that something had run over my barefoot (I had on flats), and saw a rat wiggle under a gate as it ran off!! I have never shrieked and jumped up and down in public like that before. It was the most horrifying thing I think I have experienced! It still makes me shudder to think about it! We also walked by this clinic and found it way too funny!

We had fun at the comedy club, nobody too noteworthy, but we laughed and enjoyed ourselves. We tried to get to bed early-ish again that night as we had a 9:30am Barre class booked for the next day - which also happened to be my birthday! But we'll save my birthday in New York for the next post!

New York May 2015

So this is happening in, oh, ten days! That's right, in ten days I'm getting on a plane with my best friend and we are flying to New York! No babies, no husbands. I don't think the reality of this has truly set in yet.

A few months ago, when I caught wind of the Rocky Mountain Soap Women's Run in Canmore, I asked my best friend Karen if she thought there would be any way she could sneak away for the weekend with her youngest baby and join me and Sully for the stroller run. She responded with "I have a better idea". A better idea than a night or two away in beautiful Canmore?! I really had no idea what she was going to come up with. New York in May. That was her better idea. She wins.

My heart sped up when I heard her say the words. New York City?! She must be crazy, I thought. Here we were, sitting on her couch breastfeeding our two babies (Karen has three kids by the way), and she's proposing we go to New York in May?! I think these thoughts of doubt crossed my mind for all of five seconds before I said "OK!"

And now, in a little over a week, a life-long dream of mine is going to come true! Seeing NYC has always been on my bucket list, but, like many things on said list, it hasn't been crossed off yet. And getting to go with my best friend is a once in a life time opportunity. Especially when you're at this stage of our lives, where you have a husband, and kids, and dogs, and a whole slew of responsibilities. it's not easy to go away with a friend. Especially not for a whole week.

Luckily, we both have awesome husbands and amazing family who didn't hesitate at all to make this trip a reality for us. Don't get me wrong, it will be super hard for me to leave Sully, but I know, without a doubt that he will be fine without me and in the best of hands. My mom will be moving in to help look after him and I'm also flying my sister out to help babysit. She hasn't seen Sully since September and I'm so, so excited for her to get a whole week with him to bond. They are going to have so much fun together! (And I'm secretly hoping that after she spends a whole week with Sully, she'll want to move back to Alberta to be closer :))

So! New York! Someone pinch me.

But, because Karen and I are both so busy, we haven't had any time to sit down and plan what we want to do or what we want to see when we are in New York yet. And so I bring this to all of you reading this: if you've been to New York, what are a few things/places/sights we have to see? And if you haven't been to New York, what's something you would definitely do if you went?