Wednesday, July 19, 2017

NYC 2017 - Day 1

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Things that I've learned on this trip thus far:

  • Uber
  • My body bounces back fairly well despite my thinking otherwise
  • What 10,000 steps reached feels like
  • Why elder New Yorkers retire to Florida
  • Ben Platt is a God
I'm getting ahead of myself, but that is what happens when blogging backwards. As I write this, I am on Day 4 of my 5 day vacation, but blogging my first day. We arrived early morning on Day 1 of our New York adventure, and very much like our San Francisco trip, on little or no sleep. We used Uber from the airport to my Wyndham (more on that later), checked in our bags, pre-registered and headed back outside.

This is Darcy's trip and the purpose was to see Broadway shows so after a quick bite at the diner across the street recommended to us by my SIL, we headed toward Broadway. It was a little over one mile walking and we entered Times Square the same time as the church crowd. That's a joke. It was crowded. Summer time in New York is wall to wall people. I was here in the spring, and while it was crowded this was jam packed. We kept walking and as we passed by the stage door to The Book of Morman two theater employees were outside holding a lottery for tickets. Tom and Darcy stopped to sign-up, and I may have been a tad grouchy at this because Darcy has seen this show in Tampa. She reminded me that this was Broadway and all shows were good and so we all put in for the lottery.


It was being held in ten minutes so we stayed there. By the time the drawing started I had given myself a stern lecture, taken that advice, and told everyone I was winning the tickets. Sometimes I know these things, truly. I just get this feeling and it happens. My family, however, did not believe in me, but when the first name was drawn and the guy said, "From Florida..." I think they, for that tiny moment, might have believed I was a seer. The name drawn was Darcy's. She was allowed to enter to purchase at a discount two tickets for the front row. 

Three drawings later Madison won and purchased two more tickets. Several drawings later Tom won and we turned that down seeing as we had our four tickets. My name was never called. Okay, so my radar is a tad rusty. I told my family this meant I would win Hamilton tickets and they would all be sorry they made fun of me. We hung out at Starbucks and then went to see the show. Darcy and Tom took the front row seats and Madison and I were in the balcony to stage right.



Madison: "This is so cool. I always wanted to sit here."
Me: "This is where royalty sits. The queen sits in these box seats."
Madison: "I was thinking more like the two guys from the Muppets."

Dressing up for Broadway is no longer a thing, which was a relief since we could not have gone back to the Wyndham to change. We watched the show in our sweaty-just-flew-on-a-plane-and-walked-two-miles-been-in-these-since-four-o'clock-a.m. clothes. The show was amazing. Hilarious. Of course, you have to be open minded and willing to understand the show enough to look past that which could offend you. So to speak...

From that show, we went to the discount booth and got half off on tickets to Avenue Q. We hiked back to Wyndham, checked in, ordered pizza, gobbled it down, showered and changed, and hiked ALL THE WAY back to Broadway to our next show. Holy Mother of Theater I was dying. But that show too was hilarious! Originally, planned as a children's show it became a musical and is a coming of age parable using puppets, Molly's relatives (that's for those who know our Molly). It was very good, and we patted Darcy on the back for her first two show choices.

Then we HIKED ALL THE WAY back to the Wyndham, and I can tell you I was not a happy camper and may have been a bit more than a tad grouchy. My Apple Watch clocked in over 16,000 steps and died. Seriously. The battery was all used up. I took tons of Advil, showered again, drank my complimentary wine from Wyndham, and crashed before midnight. 

New York had me like....Whoa!

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