after seeing what a few hours in the big city will do to you, we decided to take before and after pictures. this is our before. mindy and i on the left and taleese and angela on the right.
this was on our train ride in, it was a perfect foggy, rainy, humid new york day and it was our longest day in the city. we left around elevenish and didn't roll in until three a.m. shh, don't tell my mutha.
we went to the flat iron district to eat as we felt it was appropriate as that is where the infamy of the shake shack began. it was a good 45 minute wait but completely worth it.
the picture above on the left is where we caught our cab to go see the torch of freedom. we met up with a classy cab driver that was majoring in micro biology hoping to pursue a phd. the cabby's were one of the highlights of the trip. this one told us of his family coming from the middle east to live here and how he has driven cabs for 7 years. he told us how he is working on a book called "crown victoria" that would catalogue all of his adventures in his yellow wheels. at this point taleese developed some questions she liked to ask all of our drivers. have you ever had a gun pulled on you? what is the craziest thing you have ever seen? how long have you been driving cabs? how long have you lived in america.? most cabby's had never heard of utah. they didn't even know if it was in the US.
after that pleasant cab drive we found ourselves at battery park ready to view the statue.
i warned the nyc virgins that lady liberty could be quite disappointing. it wasn't a large towering figure tv makes it out to be. like in this picture below, it kind of proves the point that it could easily be missed.
it gets a wee bit better in the second picture but for whatever reason, we only ended up paying homage for five minutes. we were easily distracted and ventured up to ground zero next. the first time i was at ground zero, they were still cleaning up. it was in 2004 and everything was still quite fresh. because occupy wallstreet was only a few blocks away, ground zero was completely in tarps (streets and all) because protesters were threatening to occupy the park there citing lack of TV coverage. (seriously?) it was another disappointing thing because NOTHING could be seen. we meandered over to the craziness of the protest and were really unimpressed. the gathering was not worth all the attention it garnered to say nothing of the purpose. stupidity.
we then entered the subway with throngs of other people as we were getting a taste of NYC rain. there was a huge line to buy an MTA card, and we were stuffed underground like sardines. the trip was hitting a bit of a prozac moment but once we got on that subway all was well.
from wallstreet we hit canal street and little italy. because of the rain, canal street was a ghost town (can you imagine?) we didn't get snagged by one single asian to buy prada, gucchi, dolce cabana. we DID however make time to take a bite of a cannoli in little italy. it was so fantastic and i can still taste that sweet marscapone and ricotta cheese in that crackling chocolate shell!
we wandered 5th avenue for a while and i introduced the girls to H&M. we strolled around a bit and then felt the panic of a tourist as we realized we hadn't used the bathroom and not every store has a facility. we were directed to bloomingdales, and oh, honey. i have never had a retail experience like that. i can't give it justice to walk in to hundreds of sales people trying to sell you a purse for $10,000, or sunglasses for $5,000. it was wild. we finally accomplished our bathroom mission after 4 flights of stairs and two lovely bathroom attendants who directed us to some beautiful potties. i mean purdy. they had some lovely couches that we rested on. we found ourselves in quite the pickle as we sat down next to a sleeping homeless woman. she was aged with a large brimmed black sun hat, bright red lipstick, and her little cart. we noticed that she had a hospital band on but that was quickly forgotten as she snored so loud it could have brought the four levels down to dust. she would go quite some time in between breaths, and we had to pry nurse taleese from taking her pulse. taleese assured us that we were witnessing death right then and there in bloomingdale's in the fancy bathroom with attendants. i am a little ashamed to say i took a picture of her. it was quite the scene, i won't post it but i won't soon forget it. so so sad.
while we headed out to the gershwin theater, magnolia bakery caught our eye. it was not on our list of treats or bakeries to visit as we had been assured there were much better cupcakes to be had, but there was no line. good thing we caught something because we didn't end up visiting any other bakery. too many choices and not enough belly space.
magnolia bakery was okay. it was a five minute wait cupcake and i wouldn't have waited a second more for it without feeling jipped.
the highlight of our day was going to see WICKED. i opted for some cheap seats labeled "obstructed" and we scored a pretty awesome view by taking that chance. it was on the end of the isle, but on the floor. it was such an amazing production. the music, the people. it made my heart ache for grayce as i know she would have been smitten. one day i will get her there in the theater district and we will view to our hearts content!
after the theater we hit times square and i am amazed how this city never sleeps. at right around eleven o'clock that place was more alive then most towns at noon. we decided that we were hungry and we NEEDED meatballs. off to the meatball shop we headed. well, it was the meatball that almost never happened. it took us a ridiculous amount of time to hail the cab and by the time we did we scored a lovely toyota sienna minivan. this was likely the craziest cab ride we took. i found that the art to calmly arriving to your destination without heart failure was to not look out your window. that wasn't hard as these crazies drive 90 miles and hour and you really can't see a darn thing anyway. but, as taleese and i were both looking out the window at the truck that almost killed us, our heads ended up slamming the seat in front of us. unfortunately mine was plexiglass. the driver stopped and turned around making sure my body was still attached. lucky for me the adrenaline was flowing so freely i could only laugh hysterically about my near death experience. we finally arrived at the meatball shop and found that at midnight the wait was forty five minutes. we did what any other respectable mormon girls would do and bellied up to the bar to drink some water where there was no wait. i am sure that thrilled the bartender to have four temple recommends sitting across from him. we assured him that water drinkers tipped just as well as the drunks next to us and we only needed meatballs.
taleese here is trying to tell you how off the hook her dish was. she made friends with a dishwasher on his break and got a tip about the best dish. all i know is that i couldn't keep my fork off her plate. it was some creamy noodle with a large meatball the size of my bruised head. it was crazy good.
these are our after pictures. at two in the morning i'd say we held up well. mindy was only just beginning for the day. (she thrives at night).
i on the other hand was out of my darn mind and convinced them to take a picture of my steve tyler face. if i ever have my nose done and my face lifted, this is what i will look like.
