New York Getaway

Becky and I were able to get away for a couple’s vacation this week.  We headed off to New York City early Saturday morning and got back Thursday night.  The girls spent the week with Becky’s parents back in South Dakota and had a great time.  Here’s the recap of our trip:

Saturday

• Flight – we had to get to the airport by 6am to catch our 6:50 flight – so that was definitely an early wake-up call.  The flights were pretty routine and we got into Newark about 2:30 ET.
• Get tickets – our first order of business was to get tickets for Broadway shows – one for that night and a matinee for Sunday.  We checked in at our hotel just north of Time Square and had to head all the way down to the southeast tip of Manhattan to the TKTS booth that sold both evening and matinee shows.  We got there and the line was short so we were able to get some tickets.  There wasn’t much information there and the dude behind the glass was less than helpful, so we just guessed at what we should go to.  We settled on Perfect Crime (an off-Broadway show) and 9 to 5 for the next time.  The prices for most of the shows were pretty steep – we settled on Perfect Crime mostly for its price tag of $40 (9 to 5 was $70) per ticket.
• Dinner at Pershing Square – we took the train back up to Grand Central Station and we were starving, so we saw a restaurant underneath Park Street and thought we’d check that out.  It was a nice looking place called Pershing Café, but it was primarily empty.  We ate there and the food was good.
• Perfect Crime – the nice thing about staying where we did is that we were very close to the Theatre District and to the Letterman show.  We walked about 5 blocks to get to the Snapple Theatre for Perfect Crime.  The theatre was small – probably held 120-160 people and the elevation of each row was pretty slight, so it was hard for Becky to see too well as we were in row H.  The show only had four actors and it maintained the same set throughout.  The star of the show (Catherine Russell) is infamous in that she has played in the starring role since 1987 and only missed 4 showings.  I wasn’t sure if I was either not smart enough or not interested enough, but I didn’t really try to think ahead to figure out how the crime was committed.  I just sat there in a stupor until the end of the show, when I thought, that was only mildly entertaining – too bad we didn’t go to a different show.
• Late Night Shopping – after the show we were walking back to our hotel when we noticed all the people around Time Square.  It was just packed with people going up and down the street.  We walked into the M&M store – which I was surprised to see was open at 10:45pm – and got some nightgowns for the girls.  We were pretty tired after the long day, so headed back to the hotel after that.

Sunday

• Ellis Island – on Sunday, we got up and made our way down to Battery Park to catch the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  Since we’d been to New York City just 4 years ago and saw them both before, we decided not to invest any time on Liberty Island and kept moving on to Ellis Island.  When we were there last time, I sequestered myself in the research library to gather names of relatives who had come through there in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Becky was mostly watching Katie so she didn’t get a chance to see too much.  So this time we walked through it and spent a lot of time looking at the history of the place and all the steps people went through to become citizens back in the day.  It was very interesting – we even saw ads there telling people to come to Minnesota and North Dakota for the land.  We had lunch out on Ellis Island before we headed back.
• 9 to 5 – Becky always loved this movie, so we decided to check out the musical starring Alison Janney from the West Wing.  The musical was upbeat and interesting throughout.  The scene changes were very well done; the acting was good; and the music was good as well.  Becky loved it. 
• Little Italy – one of our definite plans for the trip was to make sure we ate a meal down in Little Italy (Mulberry Street).  We made our way down there after the show (walking past Lombardi’s – rated the best pizza in New York) and found Mulberry street lit up and ready for service.  We chose to eat at Da Nico’s because it was listed in the magazine in the hotel room and highlighted as Rudy Giulianni’s favorite place to eat in New York.  The food was very good – I had a stuffed chicken with veggies and a potato.  We also polished off a bottle of Pinot Noir, so we were feeling wobbly on the way home.

Monday

• Bryant Park – we were up early on Monday and the plan called for some serious shopping.  We saw an H&M store across the way from Bryant Park (42nd and 5th Ave), so we headed down there.  The stores didn’t open until 10, so we stopped for breakfast at ‘Wichcraft – an eaterie started by Tom Coluccio of Top Chef fame (Becky’s second favorite show).  Bryant Park is also the place they host Fashion Week which is where they hold the finals of Becky’s favorite show, Project Runway.
• Shopping – after a quick bite, we headed to H&M and Becky found much to her liking.  I pretended to be interested in some of the men’s clothes, but they weren’t quite my style.  She picked out 5 or 6 things and then we called it good.
• Lunch at ‘Wichcraft – we went back to ‘Wichcraft for lunch, since they are known for their sandwiches.  I had a turkey club with avocado which was very good.  Becky had a ham and cheese sandwich which she liked quite a bit.
• Mets Game – from there we made the long trek out to Queens to see the new Citi Field for a Mets game.  Since all the good players for the Mets were injured, we were really just there to see the Phillies hammer on the Mets.  Our seats were the 2nd to last row just to the left field side of home plate.  The first inning held all the fireworks.  Ryan Howard hit a 3 run home run that inning (he later hit a 2 run homer) and in the bottom half, their leadoff hitter (Angel Pagan) hit a routine pop-up into short right field for the second baseman (Chase Utley).  Utley dropped the pop-up, then threw wildly to second base and Pagan was able to come all the way around to score.  They added another unearned run that inning and that was all the Mets could muster throughout the game.  During the middle innings, we went for a walk all the way around the park.  The interesting things were there is a huge rotunda as you come into the building which is dedicated to Jackie Robinson.  In deep center field, they have a kids park and several different restaurants there.  I had to try a hot dog there, and it was a Nathan’s Hot Dog (famous for Coney Island Hot Dogs) which was good. 
• Thai Restaurant – for dinner, Becky wanted to find a Thai restaurant, so I used a combination of our hotel magazine and Live Search to find Pongsri Thai Restaurant only a few blocks away.  Becky was able to find her favorite dish there, kaeng masaman, which is a Muslim style Chicken Curry with coconut milk.  She thought it was great.  I had a peanut sauced steak with a cucumber salad.  As Becky and I said in the restaurant – if only Americans could pick and cook the meat and the Thai could spice it – food would be perfect.

Tuesday

• Good Morning America – Tuesday was TV day – we decided to try to get on TV as much as we could.  We started by walking down to Times Square to find Good Morning America.  They were interviewing the reunited cast of Thirtysomething when we arrived so we stood at the window and peered in during that time.  After the commercial a producer try to cull us together outside so the 4 anchors could do a bit in front of an audience out there.  I’m not sure we could be seen, but we were on the anchors left during that quick bit.
• Katz Deli – after our first brush with fame, we decided to head down to Katz Deli as we had heard that was a great place to eat and also the place where the infamous café scene happened in “When Harry Met Sally”.  We made it down there by 9:30 or so and the place was completely dead.  There was more than ample seating inside this deli, but there was only one other customer the whole time as I ate my bagel with cream cheese and Becky tried to stay as far away as possible from her decaf coffee.
• Shopping at NBA Store & Dylan’s Candy Bar – after that quick jaunt, we headed back up to 5th avenue to do some shopping.  We stopped by the NBA Store, which was really cool, and I got a shirt there along with several presents for family.  We walked quickly past all the rich stores there like Gucci, Armani, Bloomingdales, etc. on our way to Dylan’s Candy Bar, a store on 3rd Avenue where they sell all kinds of candy in every imaginable form.  That was a fun store and we were able to find cookies you can color for the girls and a smattering of several different candies for ourselves.
• Letterman – several weeks back I put in a request to get tickets to the Late Show with David Letterman for the week we were going to be in New York.  I had frankly forgotten about it until the previous Thursday afternoon when I received a call from their ticket office asking me to answer a trivia question in order to gain 2 tickets to the show.  I got that right and we were able to pick Tuesday as the day for us to see Letterman.  We had to wait in line between 2 and 3 to get our tickets.  That took about 30 minutes and by 2:30 we were back to our room to hang out until the show started.  We were told to come back at 3:45, so we did and waited outside in line to get into the Ed Sullivan Theatre.  We were instructed that we had to laugh as much as possible and bring a ton of energy to the show.  We finally starting moving into the theatre about 4:15 as everyone had to be seated for the show to start at exactly 4:30.  We found ourselves sitting in the upper deck on Dave’s right just a few rows behind the audio guy (there were only about 6 rows of seats in the upper deck).  The warm-up guy came on and did a few okay jokes and then he introduced the band who played a couple songs before Dave’s appearance.  Dave came on and said a quick “Hi” before heading back stage to get his coat on for the official introduction.  Dave’s monologue was fairly lame, in my humble opinion, but we laughed as hard as we could as we had been instructed.  His guest for the evening were Mary-Louise Parker, Eugene Levy and the band Jet.  Mary-Louise was pretty nervous and Dave was somewhat hard on her – but the segment was pretty funny.  Eugene Levy made it through two segments and was funny throughout.  Jet was good – they did their new song called She’s a Genius.  The song was pretty good, but I thought their performance was very good.  Dave shook their hands and then gave the crowd a quick good night and that was that.
• Yankees Game – we had to turn around and head to the Bronx pretty quickly after the show, so we made our way up the packed D train to arrive at the park about 6:30.  This time our seats were in the absolute back row (and corner) of our section in right center field.  The Yankees got 4 runs in the first, but fortunately the Rangers chipped away at them throughout the game and ended up winning 10-9, although they lead 10-5 when we left in the bottom of the 8th.  I wore the Yankees hat I had gotten on our last visit to New York so I wouldn’t be beaten up, and it worked out great as I was able to cheer for the Rangers throughout the game without anyone really noticing.  Because the first two innings took over an hour to complete, we started our walk around the park a little earlier.  We went to the Yankees Museum which had some cool Babe Ruth artifacts including the promissory note the Red Sox signed to send him to the Yankees after the 1919 season.   I was able to have a Philly Cheese Steak while we were there and Becky had nachos from Moe’s Southwest Grill (which also comes to our work every Thursday).  In the sixth inning, Becky was parched from her nachos so I went out to get her something to drink.  I had seen the huge buckets of popcorn when I was getting my cheese steak, so I decided to get it – primarily for the bucket.  For $12, they over-filled my bucket and I had to attempt to eat my way out of a vastly overfilled bucket that would probably hold 250 ounces of liquids.  Suffice to say, I didn’t quite finish that night – in fact, I didn’t finish by the time we headed for the airport, so I had to dump about 1/3 of it.

Wednesday

• Train to Peekskill – Becky was gracious enough to agree to come with me on this sojourn to see the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY which is about 4 hours away from Manhattan.  To get there, we had to take a Metro North train for an hour to get out of the city, then drive 3 hours through mountains and many two-lane roads to get to Cooperstown.  Then, of course, we had to do it all over again to get back.  Fortunately, we were able to drop the car off after hours, so we just had to be back on the train by 9:19.  The train ride to Peekskill was beautiful.  We got to cruise through Harlem and the Bronx and then we hugged the Hudson River all the way up to Peekskill.  We got off there and our Enterprise Rent-a-Car guy was there to pick us up.
• Drive through Catskills – we rented a Chevy Cobalt and headed out.  About the first thing we had to do was to go on a very windy road up Bear Mountain to get to the bridge that crossed the Hudson.  From there, we were able to take the Interstate for a while.  We had to cut up through Catskill State Park and take several, windy two lanes roads to get to Cooperstown.  The drive was interesting though – I couldn’t believe all of the pines and how there was relatively little population up in that area.
• Cooperstown – we made it to Cooperstown about noon and as we came into town there was a new set of baseball fields called Cooperstown Dream Fields which were littered with 12 year old boys.  As we drove into the downtown of this town of 2,000 people, we couldn’t find a place to park.  We ended up parking about 5 blocks away from the Hall of Fame.  I thought it was very cool how Main Street was filled with open stores, all with some kind of baseball name.  We ate at the Doubleday Café (a commission in the early 1900’s suggested that the Civil War General Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, which was later proven to be an exaggeration).  We walked into the hollowed halls about 1 pm and headed right for the research center as I was looking for information about my great-grandfather who participated as one of an all brother baseball team in the 1920s and 30s.  The research director was very helpful and we were able to find 7 different pictures, letters or newspaper stories about the brothers (more to come in a future post).  After that, we walked through the halls and saw the plaques for all the Hall of Famers, including Kirby Puckett, Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew from the Twins.  We saw a lot of interesting artifacts on the second and third floors including Barry Bonds 756 home run ball, which is branded with an asterisk.  After we finished at the museum, we stopped at Doubleday field to see the 1839 park, which was cool.
• Way back – we made the long trek back and were able to get to the rental car location by about 7:30.  We called a cab and made it in plenty of time for the 8:19 train back to Grand Central Station. 

Thursday

• Quick shopping – we just ran out in the morning to see what was going on in Times Square and to pick up something for Becky’s mom who had been watching the kids for the entire week. 
• Flight home – we caught the bus back to Newark at 11:15 and made it to Minneapolis by 3:20.  We were supposed to be on the 7:45 flight to Fargo, but we were able to get on the top of the standby list for the 5:25 flight.  We sat anxiously in the gate until about 5:20 when they told us there were two people who didn’t show up for their flight, so we had seats on the earlier plan.  Our luggage miraculously made it on the flight as well, so we were home by 7:20.