In September, I was scheduled to fly to New York City to meet Julian for his birthday since he was working out there and the heart failure with my Mom happened 1 day before I was supposed to go, but she gave me her blessing to go since she'd be in good hands in the hospital anyway, so I went. I felt guilty, but there wasn't much I could do anyway. Taj so graciously stayed at home with the kids so I could go.
I made it to the airport and Julian picked me up. I went to a couple of addresses with him and let me just tell you people drive so crazy in NY. We were primarily in Brooklyn and finally made our way to our first hotel where we spent two nights.
The first night, I thought he and I were just going to go out to dinner, so I was wearing these wedge heels and we took my first subway and ended up walking 30 or so blocks to Time Square! It was 1:30AM there and there was still so many people out. We stood in front of where they film Good Morning America and then thankfully took an Uber back to our hotel.
My feel were sooooo cut up from those dang shoes. I had brought some bandaids with me, but they only lasted me the next day. That evening we ended up going out to dinner with Julian's friend that he went to highschool in Mt. Vernon with who so happens to live in Brooklyn with his wife and kids. After we ate and had drinks, they invited us over to their place which was just a couple blocks down the road and had a couple drinks and then went up on their roof where we got to see a beautiful view of the city and the Statue of Liberty, although she was Very far away, but it still counts, because I saw her with my own eyes. :) We made our way back towards our hotel and stopped by a pizza place and brought pizza back to our hotel room.
The next day we checked out of that hotel and went to our last hotel, checked in and then went on another adventure by taking several subways, which is very confusing by the way.
But before we made it to the Subway's, we had to stop by a crazy little store to buy more bandaids for my torn up feet and we asked the lady where they were and she said behind the counter, so we asked another lady for them and she asked how many we wanted......Julian and I just looked at eachother and said "um 10". She had a full box of bandaids, but you couldn't buy them like that, you had to buy them individually for $0.25 a peice! You should have seen my feet, I think I had like 4 bandaids on each foot and as we were walking, if I felt like another place started to rub, I stopped and put another one on! ha ha!We made our way back Time Sqaure, which is even busier during the day, but my main goal was to see Central Park. We walked forever, but I really enjoyed every minute of it. Finally we're on our way to Central Park and I knew we were getting close because I could see some greenery and some tour guide guy tried to talk us into riding on the back of his bike to show us Central Park, but I just said no to Julian and we kept walking.
Then another guy came up to us, same idea and he was a great salesman and finally Julian implied to me that Central Park was huge and we had been walking all day, so I agreed. And Thank Goodness we did because our guy was amazing and took us to the coolest part of the park and had all of the history of the park and pointed to the buildings where famous people lived and where movies were made. Then he would let us off to let us walk down to the pond and this arched area where I guess a ton of people get married. It was beautiful. We were walking back up the stairs to meet our guy and there was this little girls sitting on a milk carton wearing a spiderman outfit with a harmonica strap, guitar and was singing all at the same time. People were just sitting on the stairs watching her. She had to only have been 7 or 8 years old. She had a box with her CD's for sale in front of her. We made it back to our guy and he took us to another place, where he took our picture together in front of this pond with the Ghostbusters building in the back and then another picture of this romantic arched bridge. This particular pond, you could rent gondola's and row boats. Then he took us to the "Friends" fountain and even made us jump up in the air while he took the picture just like they do on the show Friends. Great picture of Julian, but I hate it of me! So it was incredibly worth it to have him take us around on his bike because he took pictures of us, which would have never had happened if it was just the two of us. Plus the history he gave us was so great. But if we ever go again, I'd like to spend some time there, sitting on a blanket people watching, because there were break dancers, skateboards, people playing sports, just so many things to watch, so I think that'd be fun to spend an entire day there.
After the bike tour we decided to go and see the 9-11 Memorial and the Freedom Tower. I cannot tell you how much in awe I am of that building. Its absolutly breathtaking. Now everytime I see movies filmed in New York, I always look for it. Finally we were ready to start making our ways back to the Subway's, but as I was standing there waiting for Julian to find the correct subways on his fancy app, the freedom tower was directly behind him,
so I sat on the ground and took a picture of him with the entire tower right behind him.
We made it back to Brooklyn, then Williamsburg where Julian and his work team lived in a temporary apartment for two months last summer and he took us to dinner at this place he remembered called the Surf Bar. You would never know how cool it was from the outside, until you walk in and then entire floor is full of white sand and surfboards everywhere. We had a delicious dinner and he ordered us both drinks, even though I wasn't going to drink because I was leaving the next day, but we had a drink there, then left there and went to another bar down the street and stayed there for quite a while and had quite a few drinks.
We made it back to our hotel and slept in as long as we could before we had to get up and take me to the airport. It was sad leaving him, because he had to stay back and work some more. I hope he had a great 41st birthday weekend, because I sure did with him.
If we ever go again, I want to bring the kids and go up into the Freedom Tower, Central Park and then take them to Coney Island.
