Our 10 Year Anniversary trip to New York City

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It’s hard to believe, but over the weekend Melissa and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. She knew for a few weeks that I had something planned, but I didn’t tell her what we were doing! I did finally tell her we were going on an airplane so she could pack lightly. Friday morning (Feb 26th) finally came around and we dropped the kids off at school. While Melissa was talking to their teachers I checked on our flight….CANCELLED!! So, we dropped the kids luggage off at Mandy’s house (she took care of the kids all weekend for us!) and headed to the airport. At this point, Melissa still didn’t know where we were going. While we stood in line waiting to talk to a representative I gave Melissa her anniversary present. It was a small “Top Ten” book on New York City. She started crying and was very excited. That moment was priceless to me. After we finally made it to a representative we were given the option of flying to Milwaukee and catching a flight from there to LaGuardia. It was a gamble since we did not know if that flight would be cancelled (NYC got 26” of snow the night before). We rolled the dice and it worked out prefect getting us to NYC just a few hours later.

Once in NYC we took a bus to Grand Central Station. We decided to walk to our hotel (which was on the upper west side) since it was such a beautiful night. After we finally arrived and checked in we went up to the room. Yet another priceless moment! The room was very SMALL and very DIRTY! I saw the look in Melissa’s eyes, but to her credit, she didn’t say a word. We left the room and had a wonderful anniversary dinner at a small neighborhood Italian restaurant.

We made it back to the hotel to call it a night. Now when I say dirty, I mean disgusting! I pulled the sheets back to get into bed and there was hair everywhere. I swear I think an ape slept in the bed the night before us without having the sheets changed. Then, in the middle of the night I sat straight up… The water pipes from the heating system started banging very loudly and didn’t stop. It was miserable. After we woke up I told Melissa she could pick a different hotel and I didn’t care which one. Of course we first looked at the Plaza, but it was north of $600/night so we passed. She ended up picking a beautiful five star hotel called New York Palace. It was an amazing hotel, probably the nicest I’ve ever stayed at.

After we checked out of the old and into the new hotel we headed out for the day. We started by touring an amazing old church (can’t remember the name of it). Then, we walked up 5th ave and checked out all the fancy stores such as Tiffany’s and FAO Swartz. Melissa played on the big piano (made famous by the movie Big). Right across the street is the Plaza hotel, so we went over and checked it out. Afterwards we walked across the street and took a horse drawn carriage ride through Central Park. It was incredibly beautiful with all the snow.

Next we walked over to Times Square to stand in line for some Broadway tickets. Melissa picked the play Next To Normal. After a couple hours in line we had the tickets in hand and headed back out.

We then grabbed the subway and went up to Tom’s Restaurant. This is also known as Monk’s Diner from the show Seinfeld. We had some desert there and hung out for a bit.

After our bellies were full we headed down to Macy’s department store, followed by going to the top of the Empire State building. I knew the views would be good, but they were beyond words. Totally amazing. We didn’t go to the 102nd floor but I don’t see how it could have been much better than the 86th floor observatory. At the bottom of the building was a pub we grabbed some dinner at.

Running out of time, we headed back up Broadway and caught our show. We were in the second row of the orchestra. Pretty good seats for an amazing (very dark and somewhat depressing) show!

That ended our second day. Right after the show we went back to the hotel and enjoyed the amazing bed!

We got up pretty late on Sunday and headed down to Battery Park. There we bought our Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island tickets. Unfortunately they were out of Statue tickets so we couldn’t go inside her. So, we bought two more tickets so we could go back on Monday morning and go inside. While we waited for the ferry we walked over to Water Street and had some great NY pizza. Finally we boarded out boat and headed to Liberty Island.

Seeing the Statue of Liberty up close was breathtaking. We hung out on the island for a couple hours just taking it and the views of Manhattan in. I have no shortage of pictures of either view!

After Liberty Island we caught the boat over to Ellis Island. It was cool to see it, but it was not as impressive as I thought it would be for some reason. We walked all around it and took in the site. Afterwards we paid to do the immigration research to see if we could find Melissa’s relatives. We didn’t have any luck but gave it a great shot.

It was getting late by this point, so we headed back up to Times Square to get some more show tickets. This time we got two tickets to Mama Mia. We had second row slightly left of center seats. The show as incredible! We stayed afterwards and got autographs from the performers. This was one of my favorite things all weekend!

After the show we headed back to the hotel via Rockefeller Center. We hung out there while I played with some night photography, and then went to bed.

On Monday morning we were going to go back to the Statue of Liberty. Instead however we gave our tickets to the concierge at the hotel and headed over to the Today show. We saw (and shook hands with) Al and Matt from the show. Also, Robert Patterson was on the show that morning so we got to see him. I thought Melissa was going to have a heart attack when he came out! It was very cute.

We then walked down to the NY Public Library and checked that out. The building was amazing, but I didn’t see very many books? It was a little strange.

After we walked back up and hit the NBC store for some gifts it was time to pack up and head to the airport. We made it home without incident; just very tired.

This was easily the best weekend I’ve ever spent with my wife. We laughed and played just like we did 10+ years ago when we were dating. She is so beautiful, caring and still makes me laugh. I’m already trying to figure out what we can do for our 20th!!

   

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