And now for part two. I only hope that this blog doesn’t fall in line with most every sequel ever made (do you get the idea?) No? How about now?

It has now been two weekends since our last guests, my good friends, Dan and Alan, came to visit. They came over Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend. It was only a few days trip, but we packed a lot of stuff into the very short time. So get ready for a long post.

I knew from the pre-trip email they sent with a detailed itinerary for all three days that they were going to be wonderful guests (*hint hint to all future guests). And, I am happy to say that I was right (I often like to be right, as Drew well knows by now). We started out on the Friday night they arrived. First, we had the always popular apartment tour, followed by a walk to a local bar. At the bar we enjoyed general camaraderie and the film “Bird on a Wire”. It was a great start to the weekend.

The next morning we all took advantage of the Saturday morning to sleep in and finally made our way out of the apartment around noon. We hopped on a train and made our way to Central Park.

Central Park is probably one of my favorite places in New York City that I have found so far. Although, at this time of year it is slightly brown and drab looking, I still think it is pretty amazing. It has some incredible sights to see, such as Strawberry Fields, where on this visit we learned from a Lennon “expert” that Yoko didn’t want a statue of John Lennon in the park due to bird doodoo. And there is my favorite spot at the south end of the park where there is a pretty little footbridge over a pond with ducks. This favorite spot is very conveniently located to one of my other favorite places in New York which is, faithful readers will know, FAO Schwartz. I don’t know why, but something about the giant piano and stuffed unicorns is magical to me. So, the three boys and I all went happily into the giant toy store (granted, three people in the party weren’t quite as thrilled as others, but I won’t say who.)

After the fun times in the park and on the piano we decided to search for some food and fortuitously (big word, I know. I am impressed too.) happened upon Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries. There we had some very some tasty burgers and fries, (and one hot dog with bacon!) and fueled ourselves up for our next adventure.

As it turned out, we didn’t need all that much energy. We quickly walked over to the TCKTS booth to buy our tickets for a Broadway show. And then, we hurried up and waited, for about an hour and a half…. Luckily, all the guys were such good sports about waiting and are so good at entertaining themselves (’Let’s come up with alternate lyrics to the Green Acres song!’), it really wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, the show we wanted to get tickets for (Spring Awakening) only had partial view seats available, so we went with option number two, Altar Boyz, which, as it turns out is an Off Broadway play. However, it was still a hilarious, although somewhat irreverent show, which we all enjoyed a great deal.

Once we got our tickets we had some time to kill so we decided to go to the top of the Rock. Drew has written about this experience in his last post on this site, so I won’t say much, except for that it totally ROCKED!! That’s all.

The next day we had another late start and decided to go see that Statue of Liberty. According to the website we could get there by 5 PM and see it. Unfortunately, this was not the truth. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the end of Manhattan, then we had to wander around a while due to lack of signage to find where the tickets were sold. By the time we found the ticket booth (338 PM) we found a little sign that said all ticket sales ended at 330 PM. It was sad. And it was cold. And it was terrible signage. This did not make us happy. But being the flexible, roll with the punches kind of group that we were, we made the quick decision to jump on the Staten Island Ferry, which left from a nearby dock. From the Ferry we were able to get some good photos of the Statue and we all set foot on Staten Island for a brief moment. It was happy ending to this part of our day.

After our sea faring adventure we were all quite famished and so we headed into Chinatown to find some food. It was pretty cold and windy by this time, so we didn’t search for too long before we settled on a Vietnamese Restaurant (I know, a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown?? What were we thinking?) The food was simply okay, but our waiter was so rude, he was hilarious. He chastised Alan, Drew and I for all ordering a chicken dish (”Chicken?!, Chicken?! Chicken?!!!!) and also for only drinking water (”You are only drinking WATER?!!”). Dan was his favorite because he got beef AND a beer. Way to be different, Dan!

After the crazy waiter experience, we hailed a cab because it was way too cold to walk and went to a sports bar in Alphabet City to see Green Bay be defeated by the Giants (Wahoo!!) Then we went to another restaurant/bar in the Lower East Side called the Rodeo. There they had very yummy comfort food and we had some great conversations about James Bond and American Gladiators (a guilty pleasure of mine, I must admit) and other such things. All in all it was a very good day in New York.

The next day we were all pretty exhausted, but managed to get a trip in to Kitchenette, my favorite breakfast place, and then to Times Square before the guys had to head out to catch their train out to the airport.

It was a great weekend for Drew and I and I only hope Dan and Alan had as much fun staying with us as we had hosting them. Come back and visit any time guys!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Central Park, Food, 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.