New York! (Thursday)

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry annual session was in NYC this year, so we took the opportunity to run off together and go back to visit. We love this city. This was our third time in the last five years (living in Rochester helped!). The first time we did all the major touristy stuff, the second time we were able to cruise around a bit more and do out of the way stuff, and this time we just hung out and enjoyed the city.

We took an over night flight at arrived around 8AM New York time (5AM AZ time). Note: we are apparently not young enough to do this any more. It was not a very fun flight. And by the way, why are people crazy enough to take their babies on red eye flights. This should not be allowed. Especially when their only soothing technique is to say "shhh shhh shhh" for 5 hours. Bless Jet Blue for handing out ear plugs! As a parent, I can sympathize, but it was hard to listen to, especially while trying to sleep.

Wasting no time we dropped our bags at the hotel and went to Nougatine for breakfast. We did not research this well enough. We were pretty casually dressed for the place. This was actually our most expensive meal of the whole trip!!! It was awesome though. Best Orange Juice and sausage I ever had. I mentioned this to our waitress, and she said, "oh!...congratulations!" Funny.

Afterward, we walked through central park for a bit. A guy named Willy G stopped us here on the Mall and asked if we had ever heard of him, "Willy G poetry!" Then asked if we wanted to buy one of his poems. I said, "I think we're good on poems." NYC is one of the best people watching places in the world.

We sat here at The Mall for a while watching an armature film being made, and decided we were glad this was not my job.

This is one of my favorite spots in the park, Bethesda Fountain.

We thought about renting a boat from the boathouse, but after watching for a bit, we discovered they apparently only let obnoxious, unsupervised teenagers rent them. So we abstained.

This is Annie on Bow Bridge. We forgot how green NY is (we've only been away a year). It's not fair really. Even in the middle of this huge city, things just grow like crazy, wherever they can.

This shot is for Annie's Mom, who would die to have this pot in her garden.

We found another spot to sit and enjoy things for while. We eventually found a grassy spot near the Conservatory (the place in the movies where you see everyone sailing little remote control boats) and I fell asleep in about 10 seconds. Annie took 20 minutes. Pretty typical for both of us.

We stopped by FAO Schwartz and got the kids some presents, went back and checked into the hotel and got cleaned up. We stayed at the Algonquin. It's the oldest functioning hotel in New York. It was very cool and quaint. The rooms and halls and elevators were all small but very unique. This hotel was not built to accommodate the modern American. We really enjoyed the atmosphere though.

Then we went to dinner in Brooklyn with my cousins Jen and Sean. We went to Grimaldi's (best pizza in NY!), and took it down to the park near Brooklyn bridge). After dinner we went to Jacques Torres chocolates and got some pretty awesome treats. Every little chocolate creation you can imagine. As recommended to us, we got a chocolate chip cookie, which is more like melted dark chocolate with some cookie batter swirled around it... awesome. We went back to the hotel and tried to go to sleep early, but still not quite on NY time, we stayed up too late. Thus continuing the sleep deprivation. Awesome day.