New York, New York!

A few months ago I had the brilliant idea of taking a day trip to New York to celebrate our one year anniversary. Yesterday was the big day.

We left the house at 7:30 in order to have a plenty of time to catch our 8:30 bus down to the city. Normally my cheapskate nature would have dictated taking public transportation into Boston, But our 3:30 AM return arrival time meant the T would long be closed by the time we got back. Although we left in time, and left a big buffer, we were close to missing the bus due to the fact that the parking garage downtown I had found online didn't seem to exist. When we did find a garage that didn't tow all cars left in the lot at 3AM it left us on a bit of a time crunch. Fortunately we made it onto the bus - our trip had officially begun.

We had a comfortable 4 hour ride on the megabus (megabus.com - round trip tickets for 2 cost $30 which you know I liked!) and arrived in the city just after noon. Since our breakfast was quite light we were both ready to eat; we hopped on the subway and headed to my favorite dining locale in the city - Indian food alley (1st ave between 5th and 6th streets). Eating at Indian food alley is quite the experience. The fun begins immediately upon arrival as each of the 4 restaurants all located next to (and above or below) one another have a very aggressive doorman standing guard and waiting for even the most slightly interested looking passerby. During the early hours of dinner time these doorman may even venture out onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. These guys have one job, and one job only - to get patrons through the door. Typically as you approach the restaurants you will see each doorman open the door and bid you enter his respective establishment. Even the slightest hesitation is likely to set off a yelling match between the group (these guys are like wolves fighting over the last bit of a carcass) so it is best to pick a direction and go with it. In our case we had predetermined up and to the right Mikaela was a bit concerned that I had absolutely no preference as to which place we choose even though I had been to this spot several times. For me choosing the best one is like a mother picking her favorite child - that is to say, they are all pretty darned good. Anyhow, the guy behind the door at the place up and to the right must have been snoozing because he didn't appear when we approached the adjacent entryways. The guy from the left, however, was ready to greet us and usher us in so we abandoned our up and to the right strategy and let ourselves be led up and to the left.

The second great element of these places is the wonderful decor.

As you can see the owners of these establishments spare no expense when it comes to decorating. I noticed a sign in the window of the place that we ate that said "Garden-like view inside". Apparently hundreds of chili pepper lights hanging from the ceiling and some floral print fabric tacked to the wall in place of wallpaper constitutes a "garden-like view". Two words describe the food at these places - cheap and delicious. The fare did not fail to live up to these two wonderful adjectives. As we exited the restaurant after lunch the doorman from the restaurant next door (now apparently more vigilant at his post) opened the door about six inches and said "next time, next time". As such we will be going up and to the right next time.

We followed up our trip to Indian food alley with another New York favorite of mine - Banana pudding at Magnolia's Bakery. This is a place I was introduced to by my buddy Rick Hendriksen several years ago. The banana pudding there was the inspiration behind the dessert Mikaela and I served at our wedding and has always been one of our favorites. To my surprise Mikaela had never actually eaten there and had only tasted my knock off version (which we decided we now like better by the way). So although the pudding is woefully overpriced, and inconvenient (you have to wait in a line that literally runs around the block every waking hour of the day thanks to the fame it garnered from being on Sex in the City) we decided we better let Mikaela have the experience first hand.

Now that we were entirely satiated we decided to take in a few tourist destinations and went to ground-zero. New construction has made the experience a bit less interesting than it was before when a really neat photo and text memorial hung from the gates around the area. Nonetheless the experience is always a good one there.

Next on the agenda was trying to secure some tickets to a Broadway show which was the main reason we headed down to New York in the first place. A few hours before most shows, interested theater goers can submit their names to a ticket lottery. After a 30 minute period in which the theatre accepts names the personnel pick anywhere from 10 to 15 names out of a hat and sell those lucky "winners" 2 tickets for $25 each. The tickets are on the very front row which are not the best seats in the house as stage level is about at your chin. Nonetheless you cannot beat the prices - this is my kind of Broadway! I had done some preliminary research and found that we could get into two lottery drawings for tickets to that evening's performances. We put in for Hairspray which drew at 5:30. While we were waiting to submit out names a group of people came out of the theater and started getting on the bus. In the group was Chris Rock who was holding what I assume was his daughter. He walked about 2 feet from where we were standing and I pointed him out to Mikaela. We didn't say anything or take any pictures because he was with his daughter (who looks just like him by the way), but it was pretty cool. A few minutes later George Wendt (Norm from Cheers) came out of the theatre. He is currently playing one of the main parts in Hairsparay. When the time for the drawing came I was picked 6th out of 12 lucky winners. The lottery pool at Hairspray was probably only about 40 people, but I felt lucky to have gotten some tickets anyway. We decided we wanted to try our luck at Wicked as well - where there were probably 500 people entered into the lottery. We noticed a couple of guys from the Hairspray lottery and arranged to sell them our tickets if we got lucky a second time. One of the guys was the very first name called for Wicked tickets and our names were not called so we went with Hairspray.

We had a couple of hours to kill before the show started so we took in the M&M superstore in Time Square and then dropped by the apartment of Tucker Burton, a friend of Mikaela's who is in New York for an internship.

Seeing the show was the highlight if the trip for me. Those who know me well know that I love musicals, and there is nothing like seeing one in person on Broadway. I had a huge smile on my face for the entirety of the almost three hour show. We were so close to the action that we had to watch out for the flying spittle and perspiration from some of the more energetic actors. At some points it felt like you might get kicked int he face by an errant dancer as well. It was my first time seeing a show from the front row and I would highly recommend it to anyone who gets the chance. It was GREAT!

We finished off the evening by sharing a chicken over rice platter, with both white and red sauce (not that I know what is in either of them) which we purchased from a street cart by the bus stop. We boarded our 11:30 PM bus back to Boston and were in our own beds by 4 AM. Overall it was a great trip and I had a lot of fun. I hope to make it a tradition.