I ♥ NY

Ok, I need to wrap this up! I've been back for two whole days! I'm trying to figure out how to tell everything that we did, so I decided to make a list. Complete with photos. Here we go.


First of all, FOOD. Food is very important. Especially when you're in New York and especially when you are walking 7,000 miles a day. So, upon recommendations and our own yearnings, we had...

• Pizza in Brooklyn (Totonno's...they make their own mozarella and dough daily. So good!)
• The BEST cheesecake I have ever had, at the Carnegie Deli
• Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serendipity 3

• Hot dogs from street vendors
• Chocolate at Max Brenner
• Corn Dogs at Nathan's at Coney Island (Home of the hot dog eating contest)

So what else did we do? Really, what DIDN'T we do?!

• NBC Studio Tour

• Chinatown (shopping for knock offs out of suitcases in back alleys!)
• Little Italy (where we also located Waldo)
• 5th Ave. shopping
• Empire State Building
• The Met (peekaboo Kristin)

• Broadway - we saw Phantom (I hadn't seen it. I'm so uncultured! Well, not anymore.)
• Brooklyn Tabernacle
• Wall Street

• Coney Island (fun day!)

• A comedy/improv club
• St. Patrick's
• Times Square
• The World's Smallest Man! (or, the 5th Ave. Library)
• Staten Island
• Statue of Liberty
• Ellis Island (where we found a photo of some of our old relatives coming to the U.S.!!!)
• Upper West Side (our apt. was on the upper east side)
• Ground Zero

• Battery Park
• Central Park

• Greenwich Village
• Soho
• Brooklyn Bridge

• David Blaine (yes, he counts. Actually, we saw two famous freakish people on our trip, that is a big deal.)

It is good to be home and rest (this wasn't a restful vacation!), but both of us have kind of mixed feelings about being back and the things we are facing........... (to be continued, I guess.)

Around the city...

Just a few more, and then I'm done, I promise! :)

Central Park. And, just so you know, David Blaine isn't actually hanging upside down for 60 straight hours.

Well, this week is the second time this year that I am visiting the same city as George Bush. Except this time, he was joined by a whole lotta important people, so much that law enforcement was out in force yesterday (we heard there are 36,000 policement in New York - I think they were all downtown yesterday), making traffic nasty.

Just across town, requiring (for some reason?) almost an equal number of bodyguards and men in suits with Secret Service ear buds, David Blaine is performing his latest publicity stunt, hanging upside down in Central Park for 60 hours. The diginitaries may be elusive, but David Blaine is hanging out for all to see; Kristin and I weren't going to miss this one.

We had a few hours to kill yesterday before leaving for the airport so we went to Central Park; it's huge, you get lost, and you end up walking 10 blocks south when you think you are walking east. :) But there are lots of pretty things to see along the way:

I like to call this one "A famous grassy area" ...So, off we go to find David Blaine on his DAREdevil DIVE of DEATH. Finding anything in that park is challenging, but as we approached the location, saw the scaffolding and crowds, our excitement grew! We came around the corner in eager anticipation and saw ---- hey, wait a minute! What exactly is going on here???He was STANDING UP. We were confused -- did he quit? Did they make him come down?? What's going on???

Apparently he was taking a BREAK. For a medical check. To make sure his eyes weren't bugging out of his head or blood pooling in his brain. Is that allowed???

In a few minutes he flipped back over and hung upside down again.

There was so much press around, we decided to shoot our own small video (press play below the picture)...

He whizzed around for a couple minutes and came down to be shielded from the scorching sun by Umbrella Man and to do some interviews. (What would he do without all this attention?)

And photos. We couldn't resist. I didn't want to touch him or look in his eyes because I am kind of scared of him. Something weird going on there. But I felt guilty for getting my photo with him like he was some ornament hanging there so I managed a cheerful "Hi!" and he said "How's it goin'?" in his monotone Brooklyn accent (only David Blaine can make those two descriptors go together). Sometimes he pulled up halfway to get blood back into his brain.We were there for maybe 20-30 minutes...and suddenly we were told to get out of the way, for it was time for another "medical check." So back onto the orange platform he swung. I'm sorry...10 minute breaks every half hour??? I'm pretty sure that does not count when you are supposed to be Hanging Upside Down for 60 hours in a row. What's the big deal? I could do that!
So we decided to attempt our own publicity stunt... (press play)

We didn't get quite the same press as David did. Oh well. I am also not sure why I took so mahy pictures of him. All that aside, don't forget to watch his grand finale live on TV tonight. Hopefully he gets off the orange platform before the cameras start to roll!

P.S. those two posts below, the "Where in the world" one and the "Kristin is a fruitcake" one are both VIDEOS, in case you didn't notice (Mom). Press play below the photo to view.

Who knows how to have fun wherever they go??

foretaste? & some highlights

If you haven't figured it out, I'm in New York. Kristin and I booked some tickets a couple months ago with frequent flyer miles and here we are! We're staying in a little brownstone on the upper east side, near Central Park. In only a few days we have become quite proficient at the subway system, and can I say, I LOVE THE SUBWAY SYSTEM. We can get ourselves anywhere in Manhattan within 15-20 minutes. Sunday we got ourselves to Brooklyn and down to Coney Island. (We went to the Brooklyn Tabernacle for church today - the choir was fab and Jim Cymbala was...well, I was really tired from not enough sleep this whole week, so if I weren't struggling to keep my eyes open...I'm sure he was great!)Coney Island

Being here has given me very mixed feelings about the fact that my move to Athens could be very near (a little over a month). On one hand, it's been exciting to be in the city, figure out transportation, feel like I am conquering the uncertain and growing more confident. I know after a couple weeks in Athens I'll be feeling more comfortable with my surroundings, like I have after only a couple days here. It's also crazy how alone you can feel with a huge city bustling all around you. People come and go, rush and hurry, and at times it can seem hard to slow down and be part of a community or make friendships.

We have done so much in the last couple days, we can cross nearly everything off our list. I will have to get to some of those in a later post. We have also partaken in things that weren't on our list...like this huge beacon, calling Kristin home:

Or this... First, have you seen stories of the world's shortest man? When he met the woman with the world's longest legs?

(Earlier this week, in London - AP photo)

(Do not get me started on how disturbed I am by any 20 year old male standing under a girl wearing a skirt! Whose idea was that!?!?) Anyway, the other day we were coming out of the NYC library, and there was a huge ruckus on the steps below us. A big crowd was gathering, and people were taking pictures, like the paparazzi. Well, it was this little guy...grasping the hand of his "attractive female escort," (said the news story), not because he was shy or intimidated or as I was prone to think, being exploited!, but because "he has a thing for the ladies."

Outside the NYC public library

Now does the picture of the long legged girl disturb you any more? His brother in law tells reporters that he likes the attention. And that he has a girlfriend back home. This was Kristin's highlight of that day, by the way. Kristin, who made us stop at all the weirdest roadside attractions on our Grand Canyon trip last year. (Sacred white buffalo, anyone?)

She is a little bit of a fruitcake,

and that is why I will miss her.

Where in the world is Kelsey?

More to come!