NYC Trip with the Maddie's

A few years back, my daughter started talking with her best friend Maddie about traveling to New York together with their Dads. I work with Mark and we travel to the NY/NJ area pretty frequently. This year, the trip came together for the girls.  The girls did it in style, starting with spending some time in the Delta Sky Club, followed by first class seats on the ride out.  They were in heaven.

We took the girls to a meeting with us in New Jersey.  My Maddie has never been to an office like this, since I've worked out of my house since before she was born.  I think she learned that she's not missing much.

Needless to say, NYC and Times Square to eleven year girls is fantastic.  We stayed right off of Times Square over on 8th Avenue and 49th Street.  We had dinner at John's Pizza over around 43rd and Broadway and then headed over to American Eagle

At American Eagle, they have a deal where if you buy anything, you can get your picture up on their 200 ft billboard. They take your picture in a small studio and then put it in Times Square five minutes later.

The video of the girls watching themselves is fantastic:

Madeline loves the NY City.  Everything about it: the energy, the smells, the sounds.  I could see her living there some day.  She would sit by the window in the morning and evening with it open just a crack and say, "Dad!  Can you smell that!  It smells like the City!"  She would watch the world go by and just take it in.

I'm not ashamed to say that we did just about every touristy thing you can do when you go to NYC.  We started our mornings off with Metro Day Passes and a list of what the girls wanted to do.  We took the subway from stop to stop (using my iPhone app, of course) and saw the sites.  We started off Thursday morning trying to go see the Today show, but they were filming at the Olympics, so there was only a small crew on-site.

We went up the Empire State building, which was much cooler than I thought it would be:


We went to Central Park

Dylan's Candy Bar, as seen on all sorts of TV shows:

The Hersheys and M&M Stores, where Mark fell in love with this NASCAR outfit:

We went to see the Broadway show Memphis:

We hit Madam Tusseau's Wax Museum and posed with the statues:

The statues were more realistic than you thought, but I'm not sure the place was worth the $100 we spent for the four of us (that was with the AAA discount...)

Madonna and Brittney:

And of course me saving the Maddie from the Hulk, and her being able to judge on American Idol:

FAO Schwartz and the Times Square Toys R Us are always a blast.  We even went up on the giant Ferris Wheel.  These are giant Lego statues:


These are creepy dolls that Maddie tried to convince me to buy for her:


One of the cool parts of trip was going to see the Regis and Kelly show.  After talking to one of Nate's teacher's right before the trip, she shared with me how they got to see the show tape live.  On a whim, the day before we left I called to see if we could get tickets.  They called me back the next morning and said they'd put us on the list.  We got there about 7:30am Friday morning and were the first ones in line.  We had front row seats and the girls got to meet and take a picture with Kelly afterwards.  They were only filming part of the show that morning, so they let us hang out and meet the staff and then leave.  Well worth the time, and the tickets were free.

This adds Maddie's total of TV anchor meetings to three, with Anne Curry in there as well

The trip was a blast, but exhausting for all of us.  Mark and I are clearly not made to show with eleven year old girls, but we kept our yappers shut and let them do their thing.  Maddie was so appreciative of the whole thing and was constantly thanking me for this and telling me how perfect it was.  It doesn't get any better than that for me.

Even this week as I was back in the city for work, Maddie texted me to make sure I didn't go to any of our special places (like the Toys R Us Ferris Wheel) without her.  I told hold her I didn't think that would be an issue.  When I went running on Wednesday, I ran by a lot of the things we'd done as I headed out towards Central Park.  There were a lot of great memories that we'll have for a long time.  The Maddie's made this video diary of after the first day of the trip, which I love and capture their excitement about the trip: