Weekend in NYC With Becky

This weekend was SO much fun! On Friday, I flew to New York to spend the weekend with my best friend (also Max's Godmother) Becky. She picked me up at JFK around 5pm and we drove to her house in Stamford. This is a picture of their 5 month old Great Dane, Bubba.

We went out to dinner in Greenwich and sat outside. Then we stopped at a bar for a couple of drinks before heading home for the night. We wanted to get some sleep because we had plans to get up early on Saturday and spend the whole day in NYC sightseeing.

We took the train from Stamford to the city and this a pic of arriving in Grand Central Station.
Becky got us tickets for a bus tour that goes in different loops all over the city. There's an uptown loop, a downtown loop, and a night loop. We took the uptown loop first and it took us past some awesome places. It took us into Harlem and we saw some amazingly nice neighborhoods and playgrounds, and homes. Lots of sidewalk cafes and little shops all over the place. I've heard for years that they've been renovating and rejuvinating Harlem but to see it first hand was really cool. We drove past Central Park and several museums. The busses make several stops at the different attractions and let people off and take on new passengers. You can hop on and off and switch busses all day long. They come every 2 minutes to the little tour bus stops. This is us on the 1st bus we were on in Times Square starting the uptown loop tour. The Dakota Apartments where John Lennon was shot. He owned the entire 2nd floor of this building which is HUGE!
I THINK this is St. Patrick's cathedral but we saw so many and they were all so beautiful I can't remember anymore...
This is the apartment building you see in the beginning of the Jefferson's. I took a picture of it because our tour guide said "You know how the song goes 'Well we're moving on up to the East Side?' This building is actually on the West Side, we're on the WEST side of the city. So next time you're watching this show with someone who isn't on this bus, you can tell them that!"
Madison Square Garden
We got off the bus right after Madison Square Garden because we wanted to grab some lunch and see the Empire State Building. This is inside FAO Schwartz, the toy store. This is the piano Tom Hanks was dancing on in the movie Big. We were going to dance on it too, but there was a HUGE line to do it and no one in the line was over 12 years old... so we skipped it!

The Empire State Building from the sidewalk
Going up - met a friend... I don't THINK he wanted to throw me off but he had a good grip there! There's actually someone inside that suit.
We made it up!
You can see the Statue of Liberty out in the harbour there... if you squint ;)
Another neat view from the top of the ESB



My first NYC cab ride! Wasn't too scary...

See I'm smiling! :) We had to take a cab from the United Nations. We'd been on the downtown loop part of the tour when we got off at the ESB. Right before that we walked through Macy's shoe department which was very cool and huge then ate lunch at one of the restaraunts inside Macy's. Earlier that day we decided to see if we could count how many Starbuck's we'd seen... we lost count but I think there were at least 4 inside Macy's. We ate at bar and grill, which was really yummy. Then we got back on the bus and headed to China Town. We saw some neat things along the way but it's kind of a blur now as to what they were... museums, churches, and statues. I think I was too excited to get to China Town to buy a fake purse :)

When we got off the bus in China Town we were attacked by a 4'10" Chinese woman wearing a Fendi hat! We called her Fendi for the rest of the day. She wanted us to follow her down some scary alley where we saw hookers and a drug deal going down to buy purses and kept saying "Just up here at the corner!" WHAT CORNER? We turned around and didn't go down the alley but we had a good laugh about it anyway. Then we hit the real shops. We spent about an hour there shopping and looking around. It was really an interesting experience and a lot of fun. We both got a pair of Coach sunglasses and I bought a Prada bag... very kool ;)

Then we got back on the bus and tried to get off in the East Side because we had tickets to the Gotham Comedy club. But the bus didn't stop until the United Nations so we had to take a cab back to the East Side. We made it on time. It was 7:30pm by the time we got to the club and all the acts were really funny! Despite sitting in the 1st row, we didn't get ripped on too badly so it was all good!

At the Gotham
This was the last picture I took. This is Rockafeller Center. It was about 10:30pm and we were on our way back to the train station to catch the train home.

I had an awesome time. Thank you Becky for a GREAT weekend! Love you!!