Girls Trip to NYC!

I had the opportunity to take a fabulous girls' trip to NYC in September. Maybe it is just an excuse I give to do fun things like this, but I am pretty sure a good get-away gives me just the break I need to come back and be a rested and refreshed mom and wife.
I went with some darling friends from my old neighborhood-Adriane, Timette and Erin, and boy did we have a blast! Although we didn't come back well rested-you would think we were in our teens again-up on the streets of NYC until 2 am and getting up again by 6 to be audience members of the view. This trip was so fun, and I did things in New York that I had never done before! Thanks for the great memories gals!

The first morning we were there, we came in on a red-eye, so we crashed at our cute, what seemed like the IKEA hotel, called The Pod for an hour or so and then we were off to Greenwich Village to Magnolia Bakery for their famous Banana Pudding. It was heaven!Then we were off to the Financial District to Ground Zero. We didn't know, but they were opening the new 9/11 memorial on the 10 year anniversary of the attack, so we were too late to be able to score some tickets. Instead we took a tour of a museum across the street that was set up by family members of victims. A great experience. We were also able to get an ariel view of the new memorials-they look incredible. A must do on our next visit.Battery Park-view of Lady Liberty and Ellis Island in the backgroundWe then took the Subway to Brooklyn to the famous Grimaldi's Pizza-delish!The plan was to walk the 2-3 miles back over the Brooklyn Bridge, but we were all so tired, we opted for a Subway ride back to the hotel and a short nap before our next adventure.After a quick nap we headed out to Radio City Music Hall where we saw Cirque Du Soleil's Zarkana. A great show and so fun to see it at Radio City Music Hall. I had never been there before and a childhood dream of mine was to be a Rockette-which obviously didn't come to fruition!After the show we went to a late dinner at Del Fresco Double Eagle Steakhouse to celebrate Erin's upcoming 30th birthday. The food was unreal! I took a picture of the menu with the prices and sent it to Kipp, whose response was, "funny Chels!" Ha ha! He didn't know that we really ate there, and yes-the check was impressive! I have to say that is the most I have ever spent on food, but it was fun to splurge and treat ourselves!

The next morning we headed out early to ABC studios to try to be audience members on The View (a dream of Erin's). We got our numbers and were told to come back to the studio at 9am so we headed over to Lincoln Center and sat at a Starbucks, ate breakfast and people watched. This was no ordinary people watching. It was Mercedes Benz Fashion week-taking place in Lincoln Center. So cool! There were all kinds of people from models to designers to people dressed straight-up crazy! I also recognized Austin Scarlet from Project Runway. We headed back over to ABC studios where we found out that indeed we were going to be able to be in the audience! It was so fun! We also told one of the producers that it was Erin's birthday, so they had her to one of the breaks to commercial with Barbara! We had an absolute blast!Next on the schedule was lunch at Serendipity III. It was SO good! I had had their frozen hot chocolate before (which is amazing), but I had never ordered food there-and their sandwiches are to die for! Afterwards we wanted to see Central Park, but didn't have a ton of time, so we did Peddy Cab rides. By far the funnest way I have seen Central Park!That night we had tickets to a show near Times Square. Well apparently we didn't anticipate how truely difficult it can be to catch a cab heading further into the city at that time of night-we were seriously 20 or 30 minutes late for our show, and that is after we gave up and booked it on foot (through Grand Central Station at one point-which was neat because I had never been there). But we finially arrived and love the musical Memphis. It was darling!Afterwards we checked out Times Square and ate another late dinner at Hard Rock Cafe there.Had to take a pic with the famous Naked Cowboy!The next morning we were off to Soho and Canal Street to do some shopping! We went to DASH-the Kardashian storewhere we supprised Erin with a bottle of Khloe and Lamar's perfume!We ate at a delicious Italian place for lunch and then headed back to the hotel.

Once again, we didn't appreciate rush hour traffic and realized that we would be hard pressed to get not only ourselves, but our luggage taboot onto the Subway to take to the airport. We ended up calling a town car to take us instead. Happily we made our flight. I had such a great time with these ladies! It will be hard to beat!