Go on, Bite the Big Apple

Cathie flew into New York and I met her at the airport at around 10am. We cabbed it over to our hotel (The Doubletree Times Square). Thanks to Hilton Honors points and my diamond status, we had a suite at the top floor of the hotel. After checking in, we headed out on the town. We went to the infamous Carnegie Deli. The place has sandwiches the size of your head - literally. The best Hot Pastrami in the world. We filled up there and then kept heading North to Central Park. Central Park is this amazing anachronistic little paradise in the middle of this concrete jungle, surrounded by these billion dollar buildings. We hung out in Central Park (the big field where all the concerts are) and people watched for a while.


We headed over to the Apple store afterwards and then stopped over by the NBC Studios where Cathie got a chance to have her picture taken with Matt Lauer. The studio is right there and you can watch them tape the show and get yourself on TV if that's your thing. I'll confess, I've done the "Call your wife and say watch for me on the Today show" thing before.

As we back from the studio, Cathie happened to notice that the doors to St. Patrick's Cathedral were open (across from Rockefeller Center). It's this amazing, pretty famous Catholic Church. When you enter in it takes your breath away. The smell of incense fills the air and the majesty of this place blows you away. The art, the detail, the holiness of the building just quiets you. We walked around and looked at the stained glass and the art. The stations of the cross were these amazing carvings of awesome intricate detail.


That night we headed out to Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill over on 5th ave and 15th street. The food was fantastic. From there we headed back to Broadway to see The Lion King where we had amazing, 8th row seats. I've seen the movie a million times but wasn't really prepared for the musical. The visuals were so crazy and non-technical - I'm not sure how to describe it. It had these very cool tribal sounds and dances throughout with animals represented by actors in a way that really natural. I'm not sure how to describe it. The story was good, but not quite as moving as a Les Miserables, but the visuals and the music made up for it.

We headed back into Times Square as all the shows got out and it was wall to wall people. If you've never been to Times Square, the best way to describe it is over-stimulated energy. It was too claustrophobic to move around too much so we hit one of the bars nearby and hung out for a while before heading to bed.

We slept in the next morning and then did the tourist thing. I like to think that I know NYC pretty well, so I'm embarrassed to say that we did the City Tour bus, which to me seems about as touristy and chessy as it gets. The reality was, we were tourists, and I wanted Cathie to see all of the good tourist spots and this was the best way to do it.


We hit China town and waded through the knock-off purses, watches, sun-glasses, pens and movies. We went through the 9/11 World Trade Center site, headed through the financial district and then went over to Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty (which was the same height as Cathie suprisingly enough). We headed back up and toured the lower east east side and then heading back to our hotel to take a nice long nap before dinner.


We headed out to dinner at Asia de Cuba in the Murray Hill district. It was a fantastic resturant that exemplified New York City's ambiance and crowd. The place was packed and we were seated overly closely to another couple. Cathie thought I took the idea of family style eating when I offered the couple next to us one of the entrees we had on our plate. We then walked back to our hotel and stopped in at Grand Central Station (partly because I took a wrong turn). I tried to get Cathie to freeze like these guys, but no go.

We then headed up to the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center. The drinks were ridiculously expensive, but they were worth it for the view of New York City from the top of the rock.

The next morning we slept in again and waited for it to stop raining. We headed out to tour around (yes, again on the bus tour) to tour upper Manhattan. One of the highlights were the buildings, seconded only by the street truly named after Cathie's truest nature - her klutziness - "Catherine Slip". We saw Bono's apartment, Trump's towers and Yoko Ono's place (Jason Shinn loves Yoko Ono even more than Dave Matthews).

After picking up souvoniers we headed out to the airport at 4 and picked up the kids around 7. It was a great trip, with the best part being able to hang with Cathie and show her the city. Thanks again to my Dad with help from Susan and Kevin and Judy for watching the kids!

You can see the rest of the pictures here.