Let's hear it for New York...

This is our year of no traveling.  And by no traveling, I mean less traveling.  I mean, we aren't even leaving the country this year.  We're total home-bodies.

But a little travel is necessary, right?  We have been planning a trip to NYC with Jess & Ryan for the last two years.  Seriously.  Back in 2012 we started talking about it and we obvs couldn't fit it in during 2013, so we scheduled it for 2014.  A number of things tried to beat down our trip and keep us from the Empire State, but we made it happen. 

New York is a special place for Jess & I.  Our dads grew up on Long Island, so we have both visited the state and the city several times growing up.  This trip was special in that we were able to visit the city as grown-ups (are we considered grown-ups?) and introduce our husbands to NYC.

We flew in on a Thursday and headed to New Jersey to spend a couple of days of eating, drinking, and catching up with our aunt and uncle.  On Saturday we drove into the city, checked into our hotel, and began our adventure.

Saturday will from here on out be known as the "walking day".  We walked.  And walked and walked and walked. 

Ryan & Jess; travel companions extraordinaire.

Cousins in Times Square.

Our destination was Eataly.  Eataly is a huge market with five different restaurants owned by Mario Batali where I want to live and die.  This place was made for me.

Oh the produce! 

Cheese and meat and bread.  You could buy anything and everything here!

For real, anything!

I grabbed a huge piece of focaccia at one of the stands and took it to go.  Drew on the other hand decided he wanted to sit down at a restaurant to eat.  He chose the seafood restaurant where he ordered some delightful scallops for lunch.
 

Seriously, how cute is he??

I thought it would seem weird if I ate my focaccia in the restaurant, so I just enjoyed a glass of wine, desperately anticipating my focaccia.
 

This wine is delicious.

Turns out the focaccia was the best piece of bread imitating pizza that I've ever had.  Totally worth the wait.  We met up with Jess & Ryan to resume our walking schedule.  We visited Madison Square Park, Grand Central Station, a delightful Irish pub, and the CBS studios*.
 

Was there ever a truer love?

Beat B-b-b-beat!  Go Bayside!

After all the walking, we headed back to our hotel to clean up for dinner and a show.

Dinner, maybe?

For dinner we chose the one bad restaurant in NYC.  Note; if you can buy a bottle of wine at a restaurant in NYC for $23, it probably isn't a great restaurant.  \

After our bad food experience, we headed down to the big lights of Broadway to see the Book of Mormon.

Woot!

I bought this tiny sippy cup of wine, plus one for Drew and almost died when I was told my total was $40.  I guess I was making up for the cheap bottle at dinner!
 

I love you, expensive sippy cup of cheap wine.

Um, did I mention how freaking excited we were for this show???

We are so excited!

Scary faces!

Why yes, we are sitting in the very back row.  Thank you for noticing.

I was super excited to see the rumors confirmed... Ben Platt, one of the actors from Pitch Perfect, was playing Elder Cunningham.  He was magnificent.
 

Magnificent!

The show is about... Mormons.  Surprise!

Mormons in Africa.

The show was hilarious... and extremely vulgar.  I mean, I felt like I should probably head over to St. Patrick's and confess my sins afterward.  If you're into that kind of thing, The Book of Mormon is coming to KC next Spring.  Check it out.  But I'm serious, there's some pretty bad stuff in there.  You might go to Hell.  Just saying.

Sunday Morning!!!

I tried to shake off the effects of too much expensive-cheap wine from the night before and met Jess in the hotel lobby on Sunday morning to go to church to repent for seeing such a blasphemous show the night before go for a run in Central Park!
 

Going running!

Central Park!  It's huge!!!

At first I was really alarmed by the super-fast runners whizzing by me in the opposite direction.  I thought New Yorkers must be really fast!  Then I realized there was a race going on and I was being passed by the leaders.  It was super cool to then see all of the runners coming through.
 

Racers!

After our run we showered up, had a delicious breakfast, and bought tickets for the double-decker bus.  Sunday will be known as the day of the bus.  As will every day here on out.  I really liked the bus.

 

We are on a bus!

 

Yep.  We are on a bus.

We took the bus down to Battery Park where we purchased tickets to ride the fairy to Liberty Island to meet this nice lady.

Lady Liberty.

I might note, the waiting in line for this hub-bub is extreme.  Jess was telling us about a photo of her mom and dad waiting in line to see the statue and it looked like her mom was not in a happy place.  I can't imagine this was anyone's happy place.  It was pretty terrible.  Except that a nice man with a guitar serenaded Drew while we stood in line.  I wish I could remember the song so I could sing it to him.

The view from Liberty Island.

We walked around the island, took some shots with Lady Liberty, and ate ice cream.  The ice cream was awesome.

Liberty and justice for all.

We skipped the stop at Ellis Island because we wanted to make it back to see the 9-11 memorial.  It was really amazing.  All those pictures must be on my actual camera and not my phone.  So instead, here's a picture of a naked cowboy.

Naked Cowboy.

By this time, the ice cream was wearing off and we needed some serious sustenance.  We found it...

... at Junior's.  Do you know of Junior's?  I have their cheesecake cookbook and I only make cheesecake from there.  We Gibsons are total cheesecake snobs.  So Junior's is kind of a mecca for me.  We ate dinner there, but then got to the real reason we came.

Oh holy cheesecake.

I was seriously dancing the whole time we were there.  The wine, the dinner, the music, and duh; the cheesecake.  I was so so so happy.  To say that Junior's is my happy place is like the understatement of the year.  So happy.

These two - not so happy.

Our bellies full of cheesecake, we ended our day.  Did I mention I was happy? 

Sunday was our last day with Ryan and Jess.  They flew out at some ridiculously early hour on Monday and we continued our adventures without them.  I am happy to say that we passed the Ryan Rabe travel test and have been granted permission to travel with them in the future.  This pleases me much!

 

 

*Where I should have been seeing Jimmy Fallon later that week.  Seems Jimmy is avoiding me.  Do NOT ignore me, Jimmy!