The previous two weekends before the last we have been hosts to some awesome guests. They kept us busy and helped us explore our new “hometown”, which we had been neglecting somewhat in the past month.

First off, we had Drew’s sister, Abby. She came in on Wednesday the 9th and stayed until Sunday the 13th. The days were jam packed with sight-seeing, restaurant eating and Guitar Hero playing (and I must note, and Drew has to concede, that Abby is AMAZING at Guitar Hero).

It’s so fun to have visitors come because their excitement for the city helps me to see it with new eyes. (Yes, I am already slightly jaded from living in New York for five months.) When Abby first arrived she mentioned several times that she felt like she was in a movie and she couldn’t stop smiling. She was even excited to see rats in the subway… However, I must say her face when we came out of the subway station at Times Square, was priceless….I wish I had thought to take a picture of it.

Abby had been given some advice on places to see from some of her friends who frequent New York, so that helped us out immensely with deciding what to do. We did a few of the things that Drew and I had done in previous outings (Columbia University, Times Square, Central Park, Grant’s Tomb, Grand Central Station, Cathedral of St John the Divine, Rockefeller Center, St Patrick’s Cathedral and 5th Avenue) Okay, it was kind of a lot of things. But as I said, it was great to be a long with someone so full of excitement at seeing them all for the first time.

We also did some new things we had been wanting to do, such as going to the top of the Empire State Building. This was quite the experience. The lobby and the top of the building are great! The view from the top is incredibly spectacular. However, the way up is not so much fun (as Drew wrote about in his last post.) We also visited the World Trade Center site and caught glimpses of the new construction starting there. Unfortunately, they have everything pretty much fenced up and then have tarp covering all of the fences, so everything we saw were literally glimpses as we had to peak through rips and tears in the tarp to get a look.

Another fun excursion was to the store Century 21. Basically this store is like a GIANT TJ Maxx. There is so much stuff there and so many people there that it is pretty difficult to do any leisurely shopping. You really have to know what you are looking for, and then be willing to wade through hundred’s of items and hundred’s of people to find it. I did find a very cute bag, Abby some souvenirs, and even Drew (after he awoke from his nap on one of the couches there) found some white T-shirts. All in all, it was a success! (However, I am sure that Drew will never be going back there, and I will only go if someone I really care about has come to visit me and wants to go.)

In addition to fun sight seeing we found a few good restaurants as well. Two of the places we went to were within one block from our apartment, but for some reason, we just never got around to going to. Which is another reason I love visitors, it gives us a good excuse to go out to eat! Happily for us, both places were very good and one of them, Kitchenette, has become my new favorite breakfast place.

This has become a very long post, so I will leave the excursion with our other visitors to my next blog. But I must say that it was a great pleasure to have Abby come visit and she is welcome again at any time. Stay tuned for Lot’s of FUN with Lot’s of Visitors!! (Part II)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 11:40 am and is filed under Manhattan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.