Westmama’s Weblog

Baby, Pets, Crafts, Marriage and Other Cool Stuff!

Kim and The City May 20, 2009

Filed under: About me — westmama @ 1:06 pm

Pics from my trip.

5/15 Friday: Up at 3am with a baby on my bladder, I made the foolish attempt to go back to sleep as my alarm clock wass going to go off at 4:30 am. Instead I’m up and dressed and ready for the cab by 4 am. As I crept down the stairs I woke up West. He cried pretty hard and it took me a while to get him back to sleep. I did like getting the extra snuggles though. I also woke up John and he came downstairs to wait for the cab with me.

At the airport my flight has an hour or more long maintenance delay, which would make me miss my connection in Minneapolis and get me into EWR at 10 pm instead of 5 pm. I ask to switch to the non-stop flight into JFK, they say it is full but I manage to get seat. This flight gets me into JFK at 3 pm. I take the Airlink Shuttle from the airport to my hotel. Traffic is bad so we take the side streets all the way there. It was fun and the driver was a bit crazy, but somehow I arrived safely at the Westin.

After getting settled in my room. Chrissy and I decided to walk around Times Square and find a place to eat.Times Square is every bit as busy as it looks on TV. Sidewalks are crowded, lights are everywhere and there is an Olive Garden that is a block long. Whoa.We go to eat at the Playwright. It was good and totally refreshed me. After dinner we walk all around and end up by Rockefeller Plaza and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We see a line of people at NBC studios and decide that they must be waiting for SNL tickets… as tempting as it was to campout on the streets of NY we decide to head back to Westin and sleep.

5/16 Saturday: We hop on the subway and head to West Greenwich to meet some friends for breakfast at a small local joint called Tea and Sympathy. Breakfast was lovely, the restaurant is tiny, but the food is good. As I seek out the bathroom, my friend Cindy tells me that the nice thing about the bathroom is that it is so small that you can pee in the toilet and puke in the sink at the same time. She’s right. If I had needed to throw up I would have been in the perfect spot. As for the Greenwich area (which reminds me a bit of NW Portland),  I am amazed at how completely turned around I am. And I am totally confused by the numbering of the streets. Like how 5th Ave and 8th St can intersect. After breakfast we were so confused on the direction we needed to go that a kindly New Yorker actually stopped and offered to help.

We get back on the subway and head down toward Battery Park and walk to the World Trade Center Site. It is still a very moving place and we don’t stick around too long. By this point it is around 2pm so we decide to hop on a GrayLine tour bus and head back toward Times Square via the scenic route. This takes about an hour. It was great to just sit and relax and just look at the city’s east side. A non-pregnant me would have walked around Chinatown and Seaport Plaza, but pregnant me enjoyed the relaxing ride.

Back at Times Square we decide to see if there are any Broadway Musicals we want to see. While reading what’s available we look at the INSANELY long line and contemplate whether it is worth getting in it. Just then this usher guy asks if we are getting in line, he is standing at the front of the line, I say we are “trying to decide” and he says that he “can’t allow a pregnant lady to wait in that long line” and removes the velvet rope to let us go to the front of the line. I insist that it is not necessary and that I don’t want to cut and he says that he won’t “let a pregnant lady wait in the line and that if we plan on getting in line that we have to get in front”. So we decide it is fate and that we will go see a play. Noone in line cared or even seemed bothered that we got to cut so I stopped feeling bad. We get tickets to Mamma Mia and the head back to the hotel to rest.  I could write a book on how much I love Mamma Mia. It was just so completely great. Due to our pre-play resting we didn’t eat before the play so we walked down to Times Square and eat dinner at 11 pm. Chrissy assurred me that “you aren’t in New York until you are eating dinner at midnight.”

5/17 Sunday: Again we head toward Greenwich Village to meet a friend for breakfast.  The friends we were meeting in Greenwich are ladies I met on the internet when I was pregnant with West. We met on a message board because we all had babies in Novemember 07. I have “known” them since before West was born, but like our recent trip to Seattle I was meeting some of them in person for the first time. On Saturday it was Cindy and Heidi and on Sunday it was Annie and her baby Bea. It was great meeting them in person and I hope it won’t be the last time I see them. After breakfast we go to the Empire State building. The whole way there Chrissy is warning me that the lines can be long and it will be busy because it is Sunday. However when we get there is no line, smooth sailing. The elevator was super fast and the views were as expected… spectacular.

Afterward we head back to our hotel to rest and then go on an Uptown Grayline Bus Tour. This tour takes us up the Upper West side, then through Harlem and the down Central Park East. On the westside we get caught in some bad traffic due to and Aids Benefit Walk. We get stuck in the same couple blocks for 20 mins or so… the tour bus driver was really struggle with material to entertain us… he was so bad it was ALMOST funny. In Harlem it starts to rain. We tough it out on top of the bus… the rain is super light so we are fine. By the time we get to the East side the rain is gone and we get nice views of central park.

Again a non-pregnant me would have walked around more, but alas my hips and feet were killing me so we just relax on the bus. After the tour we go to FAO and eat dinner in the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza (they turn it into a cafe in the summer). By this point we are both tired and my body is aching from all the walking. We decide to make it an early night and are back in our hotel room by 8 pm.

5/18 Monday: We walk to a small diner near our hotel for breakfast then back to the hotel to finish packing. Then off to the airport. This time the Airlink shuttle was not fun. It was stressful they were 20 mins late and I was worried about not making it to the airport on time. They still had one more pickup after me, way up on W 94th (I was on 42nd). It didn’t take as long as I thought it would, and I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. My flights went smoothly but  it was a long day.

John and West are waiting for me in the kids play area by the security gates. When West saw me for the first time he just stared and then continued playing on the play structure. It was like I had just been to the grocery store. Oh well, I’d rather him not notice then to to traumatized.

 

Leave a Reply