New York, New York

What's a girl to do with so many posts due for the month of December! I have to start somewhere, so I'll start with the most relaxed week. Derek and I went to New York City on a last minute whim a couple weeks ago. We just love NYC at Christmastime, with the cold weather and the festive decorations. Roxy was bummed she couldn't hide in our suitcase and go with us.


If you want to know what our days looked like, it was pretty much shopping and eating. Century 21 is a must for us - we always find some great finds at this four story designer outlet building.


I had rented a lens from Photo Rental Source specifically for this trip to see if I really wanted to pony up the money for a very heavy zoom lens. So tried to take a lot of photos this trip, unlike last year's total of 9 photos. I wanted to compare the quality of the photos to my current lens.


Derek found a great place to stay - the Soho Grand. Everytime we have gone to New York we have never had to pay very much for our room and board. This was definitely a treat, especially since we love this part of town. It was so close to everything we wanted to do. Here's a view from our corner room on the 15th floor.


We gad a 180 degree view of the streets below. We could even see the Hudson River from our window. We loved all of it, except the queen bed. Derek had booked a king, as we were stumped when they kept insisting the room had a European King. Long story short, the housekeeping had not updated the records, and halfway through our stay, we got a king bed.


Derek missed the view, but the pair of us tall people slept a lot better.


I was glad to have a wide angle lens for these photos to get everything I wanted in the photo.


If Derek had had it his way, we would have slept with the windows open and the shades wide open as we fell asleep to the sounds of the city. This high maintenance sleeper just couldn't handle it.


It was pretty cool watching TV at night with a view like this.


We traveled up and down the streets of Soho each day. The weather was chilly but we enjoyed the exercise.


We ate at the first ever coal-oven pizza parlor in the country. Lombardi's is literally America's first pizzeria, and it was darn good pizza.


The problem with having a complicated, heavy camera is that no one else can use it. I had one waiter offer to take our photo, and a second came around to retake the fuzzy photo of us. He insisted he knew what he was doing, since he had a Canon 7D, an updated version of my camera. So imagine my disappointment in another fuzzy photo of us. That's why automatic is for the birds!


We love us some Italian sausage on our pizza, especially when it looks like this.


I wasn't kidding that all we did was eat and shop, as you can tell by the monotonous theme of the photos. We went to the Tribeca Grill for dinner one night after a suggestion from Jen McWilliams a couple years ago. It was right around the corner from our hotel, and excellent food.


I got a martini with thyme in it for a Christmas splash.


The wreaths in front of our hotel were so cool. The photo on the left is on manual, with an automatic shot from the bellman on the right. See what a difference manual can make?


I loved all the decor in the hotel.


This wreath made out of corkscrews.


The mini bar. I took this photo because we eventually had to go buy snacks since this was right as we walked into our room each day. So tempting.


Until you look at the prices!


I had fun taking this nighttime photos from our hotel room.


What's fun at Christmastime is all the shops are decorated in basically one big competition to have the best store front.


It was just fun to play around with my rented lens to see how the photos turned out sans flash.


We were waiting around for lunch and stopped into a three story Dylan's Candy Bar. Justin is head over heels for Candy Land, and this special board game has specific Dylan's Candy Bar stops at each turn on the game. I told Derek I would go into a sugar panic everytime I played the game if my game board looked like this. My fingers would twitch for jelly beans like no other.


Lunch was at Serendipity, the only eatery I have frequented 3 times in New York. I try not to revisit places I have eaten before, since there are so many choices. But I had to get my frozzzen hot chocolate. They had a mint one for the winter, and boy was it tasty.


We sat upstairs this time, which I have never been in this shop before. Love this chandelier! It stays up year round.


Fun decor all over this big room. Upstairs was definitely a lot less congested than the overly cramped downstairs.


We went and saw Billy Elliott the musical since the movie is one of our top faves. We loved the dancing - it was phenomenal. The music, not so music. I was expecting much more since Elton John wrote the entire score of music, but Derek and I both were left wanting for more. We always leave these shows wishing we could both dance better.


A local tourist happened to take our photo by this Christmas tree on a day where the high was 32 and the winds were 15 mph.


At least it was in focus - I'll take it!


We decide to try out the Boat House in Central Park for lunch. This was another Jen recommendation that we had been wanting to try, and this one did not disappoint. They were handing out free apple cider as we waited for an hour for our lunch reservation. It was fine for us since it took us that long to thaw out from the cold. My cider looks rather funny up next to Derek's drink of choice to help warm himself up.


We sat looking onto the water as we ate. Like the fuzzy photo of us on the right? Are you seeing a trend? Why can no one take a photo of us?


Later that evening, when we were on the hunt for the tall brown boots I had been casually looking for the entire trip (and found on the last day of the trip), we stopped by the Rockefeller tree.


Both of these photos were taken on, you guessed it, automatic. I played with the one on the right, which is very noisy and grainy. But at least you can tell who we are.


When we were at the Boat House for lunch, our waiter, who had worked all over town, told us of the best pastry chef in town. So we on a whim went on his suggestion and went to Fishtail to dinner. Definitely the best meal we had all trip, which was saying a lot. The bad news was someone's sensitive stomach had returned after a week of indulging foods (aka no Type A food diet). So I didn't eat like I would have, but look at this crab cake. It is stacked like a log house with pretzel sticks and you dip it in honey. And yes, dessert was fabulous, though I only ate one bite.


For all you of class '96 who read Lord of the Flies, please tell me this makes you think of Piggy and Mrs. Moak.


All in all, my most favorite thing about the trip was being able to catch my breath during a time of year when everyone is panicking with errands and to-do lists. More on that on another post and how I decided I would not do all that this year. I did no take my computer on this trip, which was the longest I have been away from my Mac since I got it. That's saying a lot, and I really haven't had the urge to get on it very much ever since coming back. Derek told me as we landed back in Houston that this trip reminded him of old times, great times with just me and him. That's why this trip was so invaluable to the both of us!

And thanks to my mom for keeping Justin while were out playing!