New York...

I decided to mix things up a little bit for our fourth anniversary with the promise to whisk Sarah away on a “secret” weekend getaway. I did a pretty good job keeping the location a secret from Sarah, although I finally slipped up a week before the big announcement. I chose New York City, somewhere neither of us had been in several years and somewhere we have never been to together.

Given the short time we had up there, I planned the hell out of this trip and I probably could have generated an hour by hour schedule if the need arose. We left work early on Friday to head up to the Big Apple. I picked out a hotel in the Financial District downtown. It was close to some touristy things I wanted to do, cheaper than Midtown, and more importantly nice and quiet when you wanted to get some sleep at night. We arrived on Friday and headed to our restaurant reservation in Midtown at Becco. It is an Italian restaurant that had two nice features: a prix-fix menu of all-you-can eat home made pastas and a full selection of wines only $25 a bottle to encourage experimentation. The food was great and after getting a free glass of wine simply by being clutzy enough to break my glass at the end of the meal , we waddled over to Rockefeller Center. We headed up to the Top of the Rock, the observation deck on the top of the 70-story 30 Rock building. It wasn’t quite as high as the Empire State Building, but I liked the observation deck better – unobstructed, 360 degree views from the very top.

On Top of the Rock - Empire State Building in Background

Saturday was the day of walking, and thus we were glad the weather was perfect. We started by walking to the Ground Zero site. There is not really much to see there yet, just some construction cranes, but it was something I wanted to see to remember what happened. Next we took the subway to Brooklyn (Saturday wasn’t all walking) and then walked back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge had great views and was an impressive engineering feat as well. After our walk back to Brooklyn we lunched at the first pizza place in North America: Lombardi’s in Little Italy. It was quite yummy.

Brooklyn Bridge Overlooking Downtown NYC

Our next stop was at Broadway to watch “Spamalot.” Being as uncultured as I am, it was my first trip to Broadway, although Sarah is an experienced theater goer. Spamalot, based on Monty Python and Holy Grail, did a great job of recreating some of the funniest scenes from the movie, but also was different enough to not just be a rehash. It was a lot of laughs and a really impressive production.

After an early dinner that was good but expensive, our final activity of the night (yes, I packed this trip full) was to go dancing at Swing 46. As we learned earlier in the day, the ultra convenient subway stop 50 feet from our hotel was closed on Saturday for track maintenance. So, we took a different line which put us about a mile from the club. Apparently after four years of marriage Sarah and I can still have communication breakdowns, because the message of how far away the club was never really got from me to her :) Anyway, a mile of walking later (with one us wearing high heeled shoes), and we were ready for some drinks. The club was a lot of fun; the small dance floor took a little bit of time to adjust to, but by the end of the night Sarah and I were cutting a rug.

Our last activity was to take the Staten Island Ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island on Sunday morning. We weren't that interested in seeing Staten Island, but since the Statue of Liberty tickets were already sold out, the ferry was a free way to get some great views of the Statue like below:


After that, it was back to the airport to give up the New York lifestyle and return to the Suburbs.