So, we are back from New York! It was a great trip, and I got to see all my top choices for shows, which hasn't happened the last couple of times I've gone, so that was good! It was probably also helped by the fact that we weren't trying to see many of this year's shows. :-)
I picked Todd up from work on Friday and we headed for the States. I was expecting there to be a fair bit of traffic because of the long weekend, but it was actually no problem at all! Everyone must have been going north instead. We stopped for supper just past Buffalo (at a Fuddrucker's!! I haven't eaten there in ages!), and then drove on to Syracuse, where we spent the night at a Motel 6. Luckily we had booked ahead, 'cause it turned out they were full that night!
Saturday morning we got up eaaaarly, and had breakfast at Denny's across the street from the motel before heading back out on the highway. We got to Manhattan at 11 am, but unfortunately didn't make the right turn to get into the parking garage, so ended up driving around in circles through Saturday traffic and street closures for about half an hour - not fun! But we finally figured it out, and left the car and jumped on the subway up to the Bronx.
Todd is a big baseball fan, and has been to a lot of ball parks around the country, but hadn't been to either in New York yet, so when we decided to go down for the weekend, we thought we'd see if either the Yankees or Mets were playing. Well, it turned out they were playing each other, at Yankee Stadium! And the game was sold out. So after a lot of trying on Ebay, we finally got tickets at a reasonable price. And we made it to the game just after it had started, and just in time to see Derek Jeter hit a home run for the Yankees, which turned out to be one of the few times they scored. The Mets won, but we actually left during the 8th inning, since Todd is anti-crowd and wanted to beat the rush to the subway.
We'd already booked theatre tickets for that evening, so we had time to go to our hotel and check in. Usually I stay at the hostel in Times Square, but this time it was already booked by the time we got around to checking, so we ended up staying at the Hotel Alexander on the Upper West Side, which had nicer rooms than the hostel, but certainly not the location. It also still had shared bathrooms, and they were often busy. Overall, we probably wouldn't stay there again, but it was fine for this trip.
After a quick supper and dessert at Ben & Jerry's, we headed to the Hilton Theatre (formerly the Ford Centre) for the performance of Young Frankenstein that evening. We both wanted to see this show, but for very different reasons - Todd is a Mel Brooks fan, and loves the movie, while I just wanted to see the cast - Roger Bart, Sutton Foster, Christopher Fitzgerald, Megan Mulally, Andrea Martin, etc. Unfortunately, Shuler Hensley was out, so we had an understudy for the Monster, but he was fine. Anyway, the show overall was okay, but nothing really special - certainly not of the same calibre as The Producers. Still, Todd enjoyed it quite a bit, and I was just glad to see Roger.
Sunday morning we went first to TKTS to get tickets for that afternoon. Once that was accomplished, we went to the Olive Garden for a HUGE lunch which kept us stuffed for the rest of the day! We then decided to try to get the rest of our tickets sorted, and so went to the box offices to buy tickets for that evening and Monday night. With tickets in hand, we then went down to the Empire State Building and went up to the Observatory. This was my third time going up, and unfortunately it was raining, so we didn't stay too long. But I think it's something you really should do if you're there, so now Todd's done it too and we don't have to do it again! :-)
We had to rush a bit to get back to the theatre for the matinee of Curtains. This show had really sounded like fun to me, plus it had a great cast as well, with David Hyde Pierce, Debra Monk, Karen Ziemba and Jason Danieley. And it was a really good time! I don't think the score was that great, but it was fun overall. After the show, we didn't feel like eating, so we just killed time at the Virgin Megastore, which is easy enough to do!
That evening we had standing room tickets for Spring Awakening. What we didn't know until we got there was that this performance was the last show for the two leads, Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff. It was, as you can imagine, a very emotional night. The audience was absolutely NUTS. I have never seen a crowd like that - the closest thing I've been to was the Pimpernel closing show. Lea Michele got a standing ovation when she came out for the first time, and one of the songs in the second act got a 3-minute standing ovation - in the middle of the show! Anyway, the show itself was very interesting - the juxtaposition of the setting with the music was a bit jarring at first, but grew on me, and some of the songs were very nice. I bought the CD, so we'll see how the music grows on me after a few more listens.
On Monday morning, we checked out of the hotel and took all of our stuff back to the car. We then went to the American Museum of Natural History, which I'd been meaning to do for quite some time. It's an absolutely massive museum, and our feet were a bit sore from the previous day, so we didn't see all of it, but we got a good taste, and also went to the IMAX movie about dinosaurs, so it was definitely worthwhile.
Once we'd had our fill of learning, we set off through Central Park over to 5th Ave, stopping along the way so Todd could get a pretzel. We walked down the Mall and arrived at the Plaza, and then walked down 5th Ave to Rockefeller Centre. I had wanted to visit the Christie's New York showroom, since I'd heard so much about it while working in London, so we went in and looked at the stuff on display (American paintings and silver). We then went back to Times Square, did some souvenir shopping (including a fair bit of time at the M&M World), and then went to John's Pizzeria for supper, and back to Ben & Jerry's for dessert.
That evening was the performance of Altar Boyz. I had been wanting to see this show for AGES, and so I dragged Todd, even though he didn't think he would enjoy it. It's a boy-band parody, and a bit of a religious parody, and it's just hysterical overall. Todd actually ended up laughing a lot!
After the show we left the city and drove that night to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where we stopped for the night, and then Tuesday morning continued on to home. It was probably the last time I'll drive to New York for quite a while, so I'm really glad we went - on top of how I'm always glad to go to New York, of course!
Here are some pictures from the weekend - hope you all had a fun long weekend too!
