We woke up late. Our hotel is really nice, and so are our curtains, so it’s easy to stay in bed. When we left at about 1 we found this little eatery by our hotel with tons of food for pretty cheap. We walked over to the concourse at Grand Central Terminal to eat. When we were done, we took off uptown on the subway to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After 2 stops on the subway, Rhonda realized that she was missing her phone. It was in her jacket pocket, so it totally could have been stolen, but we went back to where we ate, just in case. To make a long story short, we talked to some people, dug through some trash, called at&t, googled triangulation, talked to more people, and finally found the phone at the lost and found. I can’t believe somebody actually turned in that phone. This kind of cut into our art perusing time, so we ditched that idea and headed to the west village.
We found the apartment that they used to film the outside of Monica/Joey’s building in Friends. That was pretty cool. Then we stopped by Marcy’s salon, and she went with us to try to find Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick’s apartment. She was pretty sure that they live on Charles Street, but we couldn’t find it so Marcy went back to work. Then, after some googling and walking around and sitting on the steps of a Jewish Temple, we realized we were only one or two doors down. We found their stoop and Rhonda got a picture. She was so very excited.
Then we went to Herald Square and shopped at Macy’s. Biggest store in the world. 9 floors, two city blocks, and 4 Starbucks in store. Actually, Rhonda shopped and I had Starbucks.
Then we went to the Angelika Film Center. We saw Lars and the Real Girl. The theater is so cool, and the movie was good too. Then we went back to the hotel to rest our tired feet.

Up and at ‘em. We got up early, packed up our stuff and headed downtown to The Roosevelt, a nice hotel on 43rd St and Madison Ave. We dropped off our luggage because our room wasn’t ready, and we went to the NBC store in Rockefeller Center. Now, to some of you, this may not seem like a big deal, but for Rhonda, this is a big deal. This is a very. big. deal. Rhonda got to meet Mary Beth Evans. Who? (Rhonda says, “That was the coolest part of this trip, right?”) She plays Kayla on Days of Our Lives. After getting an autograph and a picture, we went and got breakfast at Dean & Deluca. It was really expensive for just breakfast food, and the coffee was ridiculously weak. Never again.
We took the subway up to 86th st at Central Park and visited the Museum of Natural History. Really big dinosaurs, totem poles, stuff about how we evolved, alot of jokes pertaining to Ross (namely on the subject of paleintology), a life size replica of a blue whale, every animal you could imagine, the Cox’s, that dum dum want gum gum guy from A Night At The Museum, a part of a meteorite that hit Oregon, and a really big part of a sequoia. Oh, we saw Stephanie, Bob, and Debbie there and talked about our trips so far. We were real tired and real real hungry after all that museuming. We walked for a few blocks and took the bus down to Columbus Circle. We got some coffee and a gingerbread cookie and four hotdogs. It was a late lunch and kind of random, but it was good. Then we went back the hotel and checked in. Super small room, but really nice hotel. We fell asleep for about an hour when Stephanie called. So we got up, got ready, and headed down to the lobby. There was free hot apple cider in the lobby. That was nice. We went back over to Rockefeller Center to go ice skating with Stephanie. It was ridiculously expensive, but it was fun. You can’t go ice skating in Rockefeller Center whenever you want, so it was cool to do it. After that we looked for a place to grab a slice of pizza, but it was after 11, and once again, most places are closed. We got a chicken kabob from a street vendor, which was real tasty, and then went back to the hotel for the night.

Our feet hurt. We didn’t get out of the house until the afternoon, so technically it was a shorter day. But our feet hurt. That didn’t stop us though. Today we went to the Museum of Modern Art. Rhonda and I are less than art enthusiasts for sure, but some of the stuff seemed ridiculous. Especially when you look at something, and you’re like, give me an hour in home depot and a day to nail all that together, and I could do the same thing, and then along comes some artsy guy that has been coming to see this exhibit everyday, and he weeps when he sees it, and he just walks around it, crying, soaking it in, and being changed by the art. Beautiful, right? [note: sarcasm] It was really cool to see van gogh and picasso and monet, and the coolest was probably monet’s reflections of clouds on the water-lily pond. Rhonda and I had seen pictues of this before, but you would never guess how big it is in real life. That was really cool. Later we went to Rockefeller Center and watched them light the windows at Saks Fifth Avenue. It was a big to-do with media events and a bunch of people on bleachers that were all from old money, but it wasn’t that impressive. We saw Radio City Music Hall. Legendary. Really cool. Some guy proposed on the rink there, which would have been cool except for the fact that he had them play some cheesy cliche country song. Sappy, right? [note: if you're from NY, you have to say "right?" at the ends of most sentences]
We ate at this place called Bond 45, which was very old-new-york. We had a super thin pizza, a ceasar salad and a tiramisu, sharing them all, and it was $50. It is really hard to find a cheap place to sit down to eat here. We’re probably going to stick to street vendors and fallafals from now on.
Then we went down to Herrald Square and headed up the Empire State Building. That is the biggest tourist trap. But the last time I was up there it was kind of cloudy and in the mid morning. This was at night, and the lights were incredible. It felt like 20 degrees on the windy sides. That sucked, but the view really was amazing. Pictures can’t show it. After that we tried to find coffee, but it was after 11, and it was not to be. City-that-never-sleeps? Please.
It took about an hour to get back because the trains pretty much stop running late at night during the week, and we spent at least 20 minutes 9 blocks from our house, but our feet were tired, so we just waited for a local train to come by. Stupid express.

We woke up late. We had some bagels at H&H, which is supposed to be really good, but we weren’t all that impressed. We went to the 5th avenue Apple store, and that was really cool. We spent some time getting boots for Rhonda, because when in NY… Then we went to the Strand, this crazy cool bookstore with millions of books. It was really cool. But, the best part of the day was the Upright Citizens Brigade. We didn’t get tickets, so we stood outside for an hour and a half to get standby tickets. It was worth it. Full on improv for an hour and a half. John Krasinski would take a word from the audience and tell a story based on that word. Then people would jump in and act stuff out for 15 to 20 minutes that had to do with his story. By people, I mean Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Seth Meyers, Jack McBrayer, Paul Scheer, and a few others. We weren’t allowed to take pictures during the show, but it was hilarious. I took a pic of the theater just so you could see how personal it is. As far as I could tell, there were no mics used, except maybe for recording. It was one of the coolest things. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to watch do improv.

So we had a busy day. First though, I’ll tell you about last night. We got into JFK around 8:30, and after we got our baggage and traversed through the subways to Marcella’s (Rhonda’s friend from beauty school) pad in Harlem, it was 11:00. We hung out with some of Marci’s friends and ate fajitas. It was a good first night.

This morning we went to Greenwich village to see where Marci works. Then we just walked around for a while. We had breakfast at this place that was a cafe/communal table. It was really cool to see a very large table with a whole bunch of people who didn’t know each other sitting around and talking to each other while reading the paper and drinking coffee. We ran across the set for Sex & The City where they film Carrie’s apartment, and that made Rhonda happy.

Next we went to the WTC site and saw the giant hole. It is huge. They are still taking rubble out. It’s been over 6 years. Crazy. Then we went to Wall street. We saw where George Washington was sworn in. There were 2 different film crews taping commercials so we got some footage of that. One was for a financial something or other, and the other was like a cell phone/bubble ad. I’m really not very sure. From there, we headed down toward the water and saw Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge.

We ended up by the Staten Island Ferry, but we didn’t head out to see Lady Liberty. Instead we headed uptown toward SoHo. That was the plan, but we got side tracked and ended up looking at a sea of knockoffs in China Town. After some din din at some pizza joint in SoHo, we actually went into some of the real expensive shops. They were ridiculous. So we left. We headed up to Times Square. It was pretty nutty even though most of Broadway is dark with the strikes. We talked with some of the strikers, and hopefully it will end tonight. It seemed legit, and even though the timing sucks for us, it is well planned on the union’s part. They really do want to go back to work.

After that, we met back up with Marci and went to this little Italian place. After being there for about 20 minutes and a loud birthday song, the songs started coming consistently and we realized we were in an Italian/dance-party-bachelorette-style restaurant. When we left there, we were going to go to the Angelika to catch a film, but we realized we were tired, so we switched trains back uptown to Harlem. We’re still waiting to hear about the strike, but I think we will try to check out the Upright Citizen’s Brigade tomorrow night if we can get tickets.

I don’t know why, but this makes me happy.