It all started with an email, as many things do these days... you know my mom writes, "Would you ever want to go to New York?" and I reply, "Sure!" with out really giving it much thought, not realizing that once she had that reply, the gears were in motion. You see I have become a bit of a homebody in the last few years. Don't get me wrong I LOVE to travel, but I have a 2 year old and a 3 year old, I am a stay at home mom, run an in-home daycare and am in grad school, so I REALLY don't get out much. Well, next thing I know reservations are being made, tickets are being purchased and I realize that this is really happening. I haven't left my boys for more than 5 hours and now I am going to leave them for 3 days.
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| Penn Station--Baltimore |
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| Me, Mom and Calista on the train. |
Well the rest goes as you would imagine, preparations are made and before I know it we are off. We took the train, early in the morning. Mom had 50 pages of "things to do in NY" for us to look at. Calista and I started looking and checking off thinks that look cool. Then Calista started entering the places into her iPhone. I think we had about 28 things on our list, with no regard for distance or practicality, 'cause we just cool like that. We got to NYC around 11 and got a cab to our room at the Marriott in Times Square.
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| View from our hotel window |
Ok. I usually cook, and I am a pretty good cook, and I love food. I love eating out, and I never do anymore, because I have two crazy kids, I am cheap, and to boot my kids have food allergies. Well, anyway, this place was legit. The fish tacos were on point, and I had shrimp and grits, and I could have eaten it all day.
I don't know where we were planning on going, but we ended up at this pretty cool art gallery. Mom got Daddy a gift, one of those things where the sand falls and you just stare at it through the glass, something that in my house would be a dangerous projectile.
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| Naked Cowboy |
We planned on catching a cab from there, but were not having any luck, so we just kept walking; good thing we did, or we would have missed some real gems, like the naked cowboy, and all the crazy street vendors.
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| Prom Dress Fabric? |
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| Subway |
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| The Meataterian Shop |
Next plan was to go to Grenwich Village. We decided to take the Subway. It didn't go to well (gave my mom a panic attack) so we decided from then on we would take cabs. We just people watched and checked out some cool stores.
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| Calista found her true calling |
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| Mom |
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| Mom and Calista |
Then we found Murry's Cheese Shop (one of the things from the list) which was awesome. They had a cheese bar attached so we were pretty sold on that for dinner. Our lovely waiter selected out meats, cheeses and accompaniments. Oh and of course wine!
We walked around Grenwich a little more and the got a cab back to mid-town. Got scammed by a street artist, Calista had a possible pick pocketing credit card incident, and got told I didn't tip Woody enough for the picture. We got some hot dogs and a shake from a truck and called it a night.
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| Clinton St. Bakery |
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| Mom and I at the Clinton St Bakery |
The day started with a long cab ride to the Clinton Street Bakery. I think we found it on Yelp but as I just looked it up and apparently it was voted "Best Breakfast" in NYC, which might explain the 3 hour wait to get a table. Well Calista worked it, and managed to get us a table right away. The food was crazy good; so good that people were seriously waiting 3 hours to get a table.
Next stop Screamin' Mimi's, which is a funky vintage clothing shop. I picked up some sweet shades and we loved looking at all the cool designer, vintage clothes. Then we stumbled on this crazy parade that was at least 3 hours long.
After about an hour of watching the parade we decided to get a slice of NY pizza at Ray's!
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| Sculpture made out of motorcycle parts |
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| Nice kicks |
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| Love the 4 story parking |
We went to a few shops and then got in a cab headed for Chinatown.
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| Beef Jerky |
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| Note written by the pharmacist |
One of the places on our list was the beef jerky shop so we went in search of it and picked up some jerky. Calista was determined to get some Power ball tickets so we stopped in a pharmacy to get some. We decided to ask the salesperson where we could get some good, authentic Chinese food. She writes the name in Chinese. Well, game on, were were determined to find it. We asked some guy what it was called in English, he takes one look at it and is like, "woah" and hands it to his mom who takes one look at it and says, "Wonton Garden." This cracked us up. We found it and got some awesome food (the leftovers of which Calsita may or may not have eaten by now). We realized that we needed to start heading back toward the hotel to get ready for the play...
Then we had a nightcap at our hotel's 49th floor glass revolving bar. Cool concept, but the hour wait was crazy and exhaustion + really strong sixteen dollar margarita + revolving was a bit much for this country girl.
And now we are at our final day in the Big Apple. It was chilly and raining. We checked out and left our bags at our hotel. We had planned on going to some flea markets, but that wasn't looking like a good plan with the weather. We ended up going to Century 21 which is a 5 story discount store with a lot of everything. The place was packed the line for the dressing room was 20 deep, and every person had a shopping cart filled with clothes. I got busted by security for trying on clothes in the store.
We made it back to the hotel and got our baggage and then headed to Penn Station. The train was super crowded but we made it on an got home ok.
I missed my babies and as you can see Cass tried to wait up for me but he ended up passed out on the floor.
View more photos by clicking the play arrow on the photo below
Special thanks to Mom, Dad, Calista, Brent, Sarah, Stacey, the McHugh's and the Riley's for helping out and making this awesome trip possible.
Also some photo credits to Claista and disclaimer... I didn't bring my DSLR. All pics I took were with my iPhone. If you want to check out my professional photography go to
www.Facebook.com/JenniferRileyPhotography
www.JenniferRileyPhotography.com
View my photography blog at http://jenniferrileyphotographymiddletownmd.blogspot.com/
