My Goodness, My Guinness: I Heart NYC

Wow, we had a PERFECT weekend!! I sure do love NYC. The whole city has such an energy about it... It's just definitely a city like no other city. Our train arrived in NYC around 10:30am, and right away I had an amazing experience: There was a woman walking in front of us at the train station, and right in front of her was an older couple (like 70s or 80s maybe?). The woman in front of us tapped the older woman on the shoulder and said, "Your hair is beautiful". The older woman just lit up like a lightbulb. It was SO darn cute, and I'm so happy that I saw that exchange. She was so happy and just glowing after that compliment, and after the younger woman walked in a different direction, the older lady told her husband "She said my hair is beautiful!", and she looked so darn happy. That was the start to a great day :)

We took the subway over to the 9/11 Memorial, and can I just say WOW. That memorial was SO beautifully done, and it's incredibly powerful and moving. And one really cool aspect of it is that the sound of the waterfalls in the memorial really drown-out all of the noise of the city and even conversations around you. All you can hear is the peaceful white-noise of the water. It was amazing, and I don't know how someone could NOT get emotional at that memorial... I was definitely very moved and got a little emotional.

It's hard to get an idea of how massive this is from a picture, but it's huge. And there's two of them (one for each of the towers). I don't know if you can see in the pic, but there's water flowing down the walls (and that's where you get the peaceful sound).

This is the new World Trade Center building (the Freedom Tower). It's a really cool looking building.

Our next stop was a BBQ place that I had heard a lot about, and it was right across the street from the 9/11 Memorial. It's called Mighty Quinn's, and there are a few locations in NYC but this one was so convenient for us. The BBQ was DELICIOUS, and they also had a very nice beer selection!!

After that lunch stop, we had a very leisurely stroll along the water to get to Pier 16 where we would catch our boat to go around The Statue of Liberty. We ended up being a little early, so we saw a bar right next to the pier that had AMAZING views, so we stopped in there for a drink and had a lovely time relaxing. Then we went back to Pier 16 and caught our boat, and OH MY GOSH. That was one of the coolest experiences ever!! The views of the city were SO cool on the whole trip, and I was so darn excited to see The Statue of Liberty!! I got a little emotional when I saw it too, so I've decided I'm just becoming really sappy in my old age. Oh well. It was an amazing time, and it was shaping up to be an absolutely perfect day.

The Brooklyn Bridge!! Beautiful.

The Brooklyn Bridge, and that's the new World Trade Center building on the left.

NYC!! I love the mix of old buildings and modern buildings. It's so beautiful!

Ellis Island!!

This is when I saw that we were getting close to The Statue of Liberty and I really started freaking out!

She's getting closer!!

There she is!! And the boat was playing Ray Charles' version of "America the Beautiful", so this is when I started getting a lil emotional (yes, I'm a weenie). I blame Ray Charles.

I think this was my favorite picture that I took.

After our amazing boat tour, we took the subway to our hotel in Times Square and got all checked-in, and spent some time relaxing there for a little bit before we wandered over to Havana Central for dinner. It's a Cuban restaurant right in Times Square, and they're rated for having THE best mojitos in the city!! I love mojitos. We both ordered Cuban sandwiches with plantain chips, and it was an AWESOME dinner! So delicious. After dinner we wandered around a bit more, and then made our way over to the Gershwin Theater to see Wicked!!! Wicked was SO good, and I'm so happy that I didn't really know much about it beforehand! It was so entertaining and so awesome. We both loved it!

Radio City Music Hall!! Saw this while we wandered.

Here's the Gershwin Theater before Wicked started!! You weren't allowed to take pictures during the show, so this is my only one. Our seats were AWESOME!! We were the first row of the balcony.

A picture of Times Square after the show!

Times Square again!

Times Square again! I took this one because of the Wicked billboard in the background.

We saw these statues on the side of a building while we were wandering around at night!

Sunday ended up being SUPER cold (in the 30s) with some really brutally cold wind, so we decided not to wander around Central Park like we'd originally planned. It was just too painfully cold outside with the strong winds. We had a really amazing breakfast at a cute little restaurant McGee found online. We both ordered large lattes, and I am not exaggerating at all when I say that the latte was in a huge soup bowl! It was a big bowl of delicious latte, and I was in heaven. We wandered around the city a little bit, and then we made our way over to the train station to check on our train, because there had been a HUGE train derailment around Philly that morning and a few people died... so we were having trouble finding info on the status of our train. Our train wasn't affected, but a LOT of other trains were super delayed, so the train station was a madhouse. We actually saw an earlier train that we could take to get back home a little earlier, so we ended up switching our reservation to that one. We still had a little bit of time to kill at the train station, so we wandered and I saw that there was a Magnolia Bakery in the train station!! Their cupcakes are supposed to AMAZING, so I got one to take home with me and McGee got a cookie. I ate the delicious cupcake while watching The Walking Dead in the evening, and it was the perfect way to end a perfect weekend!!!