It's still Day 3 in NYC.....but this is part 2!

Okay....I had to go and read the post before this one to figure out where to begin.  I try to be as accurate in the chain of events as possible.  It's called "trying to keep my brain active" at my old age.

Okay, well just in case you didn't read the last post to see where we left off.....let me refresh your memory.  We just got done eating a crappy lunch..............

After checking our subway maps......we headed back to a stop for the bus tour.  Lucky for us we had "jump off - jump on" tickets for 2 days, which meant we could hop on the bus at any stop as much as we wanted for 2 days.  Since we had done the downtown and the uptown tour the day before, we wanted to take advantage of the Brooklyn tour.  We had never been to Brooklyn before.

We got to the stop and found a LONG line of people waiting for the last bus to Brooklyn.  What a big disappointment it was to find out the bus was full 4 people ahead of us.....boo.

But wait........the bus company did an amazing thing and the next bus that pulled up to that stop they designated as the Brooklyn bus tour since there was still a few of us left in line.  It was actually better to have missed that first bus.......because our tour guide was AWESOME and the bus was hardly crowded.  Yippee......off to Brooklyn we go!

The bus driver chose the George Washington Bridge to get to Brooklyn. 

We did get a good picture of the Brooklyn Bridge in the top picture and also in this bottom picture!

No time to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on this trip......but there will always be a next time.

A nice park in the middle of Brooklyn

Since this was not a regular route for our bus driver, he got a little lost.  Bad for him maybe.....but for us, it was a treasure trove of awesome pictures.    Such as the skyline of Manhattan from Brooklyn!

After we drove around Brooklyn for about an hour.....the bus headed back to Manhattan.  It was supposed to let us off at the original bus stop, but they decided we could ride back to Times Square if we wanted to stay on.  We elected to stay on because it was a lot closer to where we wanted to be.  The rest of these shots are just random shots we got on our way back.

 

Fountain at Bowling Green Park

Riding on the top of a double decker bus puts you really close to traffic signals.  I snapped this as we were stuck in gridlock traffic.

This one too!

 

 

A picture of the Freedom Tower as we were turning down the street. 

This is an AWESOME picture of it!

 

Since we were stuck in 5pm traffic in the middle of New York City.....a just leaned my arm out and snapped a picture of all the gridlock!

After arriving back in Times Square, we hurried around to the last minute ticket booth to find something to entertain ourselves for the evening.

Due to time limits (and the fact that we didn't have time to go back to the hotel room to change clothes).....we chose an Off Broadway play called Drunk Shakespeare.

We had hurridly read some review about this show, but really had no idea for what we were in for.  We had a little bit of time to kill and it was hot.....so we grabbed some yummy delicious yogurt and just walked around Times Square enjoying ourselves before the show. 

The theater was a little off the beaten path and after a dark elevator ride to the 4th floor of an old building.....we arrived at our venue!

We have to say that the seating was definitely different than most plays we've attended.  We were seated in various types of furniture around what looks like a library.

The bar service was awesome.  Just write it on a paper and put it on a little stick on your table and someone comes and gets it and brings you your drink.....our choice this evening was Corona.

They had this interesting throne at the front of the room, which turned out to be a special seat if you were willing to bid on it.  I'm not sure what my husband was thinking when he started bidding, but thank goodness.....he didn't win.  If you sat here you had free drinks, but also a more important role in the show.

The show was hilarious, different, and had lots of audience participation.  The main premise from the title is that they did a Shakespeare show, but one member of the cast (chosen randomly) had to drink shots throughout the night......which not only made them a little wasted, but also even more funny when reciting their lines.

A cast picture after the show will clearly show you who the DRUNK person of the cast was that evening.  It was fun and it was different.

After the show, it was time to grab some dinner.  We had been given free tickets to a comedy show later that evening which was also happening at the same place we had just seen the play.

But first we needed some grub.  Our pick was The Glass House Tavern.  I feasted on baked truffle mac and cheese with bacon......OMG!!!  I was so busy enjoying the best mac and cheese I had ever had in my life and didn't notice what Paul ordered.  I think he had some sandwich with sweet potato fries.

After our quick dinner, we headed to the comedy show where we laughed our butts off at people insulting us and the rest of the people in the crowd.  It was really really funny.  The show let out about midnight and we headed to ........ TIMES SQUARE of course.  This is where all the fun is at this time of the night.

The biggest crowd attractor (except for the girls with no shirts that painted their naked boobs and tried to get big tips from drunk men and little boys) was the Revlon giant TV which took pictures of the crowd.  We hung out here a couple of times and just like the rest of the tourists we took our group picture when we saw ourselves.  If you look close.....you might see us (I guarantee you that we are part of this crowd)

I had to take a picture of my awesome husband with Times Square in the background!

 

And of course, you never take just one picture......you always take two!

We finally decided to call it a night and headed for the hotel.  Us old folks just couldn't keep up and decided to call it a night around 1am.  After all.........we still had another huge fun filled day ahead of us.

Start spreading the news.....it's Day 3 in New York City!

Let me just start off by saying (in case you've never heard me say it).......I LOVE THIS CITY!  I seriously would love to live here for a year.  It's such a vibrant and alive place.....hard to describe it unless you've seen it for yourself.  I can see why so many people live here.

Well we begin Day 3 with a continuation of Day 2.  We had gotten off the tour bus close to our hotel for 2 reasons:
1.  So that we didn't have to go far to get ready for the show last night
2.  So we could begin the tour in the same place we got off yesterday and not be very far from our hotel. 

So after the usual stop at Starbucks.....we jumped on the subway and headed towards the church stop we got off yesterday.

While I was waiting for Paul to get his coffee.......I sat in the middle of Broadway on a bench and just enjoyed how beautiful this street was.  It was so relaxing.

When we got off the subway at our stop to find the church.....we walked down the street and discovered this AMAZING pop culture trivia spot.  The restaurant where they filmed TONS of Seinfeld episodes.  How amazing that was to stumble upon this iconic spot!

After jumping on the tour bus.....we enjoyed the trip to Grant's Tomb and the Apollo Theater in Harlem (I had pictures of both, but can't locate them at the moment).  We were getting hungry and trying to figure out where we were going to jump off the bus at this point.

We ended up getting of at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The building was huge and magnificent.  I seriously couldn't get the whole building in one picture.

We spent a couple of hours here and barely scratched the surface of all that there was to see. 

Magnificent paintings from famous, famous painters

I enjoyed taking pictures of my husband taking pictures of pictures......(what a mouthful)

Here's the picture he was snapping:

 

 

We saw unusual sculptures.

 

 

The highlight was going to the top floor garden and capturing magnificent pictures of the city. 

We tried taking a selfie......but wasn't too successful at capturing the city in the background!

We ended up having to do the bartering system of "will you take a picture of us.  We'll take one of you".  It works pretty much most of the time.   Here's the pic they took of us!

 

 

We left the museum and the next destination was lunch.  We hopped back on the tour bus and Paul scrutinized the bus route to find the best place to get off and enjoy lunch

As he studied the map, I amused myself taking practice selfies

Yes, my husband does know that I am a weirdo.......but a fun one!

We got off the bus and spent the next hour trying to find the perfect place for lunch.  As we walked around.......we spied a rat and it looked like a good place to take a picture.

Unfortunately for us......we ended up eating at this place:

 

The hamburger was undercooked and the hot dog they gave me was plain with nothing on it.  But it was hot and we just needed to rest our feet for awhile.

 

After lunch.......we once again pulled out the tour bus map and plotted our journey to get hooked up with the tour bus again.

 

But the rest of the day will have to be detailed later........................

 

 

We interrupt the trip to NYC to bring you this announcement:

I sat down briefly last night and started writing NYC Day 3, but there was so many pictures and my time was so limited, that I didn't get very far with it.

So......because I don't have the time right now to finish it.....I'll just interrupt it with the awful pictures of my feet.

4 days before we left for Santa Fe, I unfortunately partied a little too hard and was confined to the bathroom all night long.  Well this left me dehydrated and my body didn't react too well to that....so the next afternoon my legs just cramped up like straight sticks and my feet cramped into weird positions and wouldn't let me walk.

We had to call an ambulance because I couldn't walk, Paul couldn't hardly lift me because my legs wouldn't bed, and I had no clue how I was going to sit in a car so he could drive me to the emergency room.

The diagnosis was dehydration and I just had to lay in a bed for 5 hours and enjoy 3 bags of IV fluids.  Slowly my legs returned to normal and my feet finally straightened out.

It sure does suck to be old.  This will serve as a reminder that I'm not in my 20's anymore and I need to cut back on the partying a little.

Luckily, by the time we left on Saturday, I felt much better and was pretty much back to 100%

Thursday night before we left, one of our driver's got in an accident.  This is one of those things you hate to get the phone call......that one of you driver's has been in an accident.

This guy was taking a left and someone ran a red light and he hit them.....and caused her van to roll over.

This was his vehicle.  Luckily no one had any serious injuries in this accident.  However, the other car really took a beating from that crash.

Tomorrow we have our pizza party for the shelter and we have a fundraiser for another restaurant this week.  They are closed due to a fire iin their building.  Just too many things happening this week.

I need to start getting some of these pictures off of my camera......it's starting to get too full.

I need 42 hours in a day in order to get on top of everything.......boo

Summer traveling has officially ended.......(well maybe)

Back from our last BIG trip of the summer.

We're tired and ready to start focusing some energy on things that are going on here.

The business is in a scramble.....need staff immediately.  How different it was from this summer when we were fully staffed up with awesome people.  Well.....that's the way the cookie crumbles (or the pizza tosses).

I still have suitcases sitting on the floor to unpack.

I've got a mouse (or mice) in my house that needs to get taken care of.

Moles in the yard.

Pictures to download and two trips to still document.

House to clean.

The never ending mountain of PZ paperwork that has to be done constantly.  That job will be everlasting.

And a whole lot of remodeling that needs to get done.  We're ready to start on our home rennovations project which will include kitchen, 3 bathrooms, siding, gutters, new flooring throughout the whole house.  Wow!  And I want it all done before the kids get here for Christmas (lol).

Oh yeah.......still have a dumb little dog that I need to get fully housetrained.

So no more traveling for awhile.......except I plan on taking the older son out for a couple of birthday adventures.....but those would just be little day trips.

Stay tuned for our latest adventures.  We still have almost all of NYC to finish.  But.....here's some pictures that downloaded off of Paul's phone.......it will give you a sneak peek of our New Mexico trip.

Hopefully I can get back to this blog soon.......I have so much to tell you and I need to hurry up and do it before I forget it.......ha! ha!

You know those recipes you see on Facebook?

You know what I'm talking about......the ones that always look so delicious and you see them get shared a million times.

Well this one popped up from my mother one day and I thought I would give it a try.

Upside Down Sweet Potatos.......let's give it a shot and see if we should keep it or if we should toss it.

 

Sweet potatoes washed and lined up ready for duty.

 

Two Sweet Potatoes cut in half and placed in a baking sheet with brown sugar and butter. 

Now they just need to bake for about 45 minutes

So while we are waiting for those taters to cook.....we'll start making the side dishes......

Salad and cruciferous vegetables to snack on!

And here's our finished product.  While I do think that the carmelized sugary and buttery coating on the top was delicious......it didn't seep enough in the potato to flavor it.  I ended up having to add a little more butter and a little more brown sugar to mine. 

I find this recipe good, but I can get the same flavor by just baking my potatoes and adding the stuff when they are done.  It's easier and faster.

And in other breaking food news.......I took a picture of our dinner before I cooked it.  It was the celebration dinner for getting last year's taxes done and turned in.  That's always a great feeling.

So we feasted on grilled Ribeyes, grilled mushrooms with onions and cheddar, and grilled zucchini sticks.   Some nights you just have to go all out and enjoy a feast!