New York: A Look Back

Today marks the week anniversary of the our return from Metropolis so I felt it would also be a fitting time to look back at all of the memories and share a few of the highlights. (side note: yesterday marked the anniversary of the attack on that great city and our country. thoughts, prayers and little moments of reflections go out for those who lost their lives or their family members that day. same goes for those working each day to protect us and other parts of the world from something similar in the future- glad to get your email this morning Brandon.)

So this New York trip came somewhat out of the blue when one member of the tribe ended up with an airline credit that was burning holes in the designer jeans it was resting in. Somehow the idea spread and another three tickets were purchased along with a hotel but the planning stopped there. No theatre tickets were bought, no tourist sights were researched. Everyone fell back into a busy work schedule and had to deal with moving into new apartments.

It was looking really bad the night before the flight when one member of the tour group checked out do to illness and I ended up with only two hours of sleep. But as the two of us departing from Dallas arrived with plenty of time to make our 7:40 am flight and got a decent nap on the plane, things began looking up as we met up with our third buddy and ventured out into the Big Apple, all in coordinating green shirts.

[Note: originally provided detailed outline of trip but realized even my mom wouldn't sit long enough to read it so I will change it to only include my personal highlights]

So this was my fourth trip to New York, and as with DC, I am starting to feel more like a visitor than a tourist. I know the basic lay out of the city and have visited the popular sights, what four times now?

First day included celebrity sighting by MP (this merited walking an extra block out of the way for her even though she had been gracefully commenting on the large amount of walking we were already doing doing). Celebrity sighted was one Annette Benning on the east side of Central Park along 5th Ave., complete with freaky bleached and spiked hair. Not to be out done, I spotted the lead singer to Go Go Dolls walking in SOHO on Sunday (and strangely enough, his hair looked remarkably similar to Annette's). While this sighting was not shared by my tour buddies, I've sticking to it. Friday night involved dancing at Red Lion on Bleeker Street. This was a fun little place with a great cover band and beautiful people (some I tried to persuade my single tour mate to flirt with to no avail).

Saturday gets a little hazy but our evening plans involved donating a kidney and promising to send our first born to get tickets to the sold out Wicked. Now I'm not sure, but I think Wicked was somehow written as a political satire with the wizard representing President Bush and Elphaba, the witch representing either the people of New Orleans (who President Bush doesn't "care about") or the country of Iraq. Anyway, the musical was excellent (seeing them in the theatre of New York makes a good show about 100 times better)! Afterwards, we took a bike taxi (and nearly died about ten times as the peddler hurled his little bike cart in front of moving traffic expecting them to stop) to dinner where we found a wonderful piano singer and a huge painting of a naked woman.

Sunday afternoon finds us in China Town (aka: boring fake purse street). While following my two traveling companions through these stores, they wander into a back room and a door/portion of the wall shuts in front of me. After about ten minutes of me imagining the two of them being sold into the Asian sex trade, they each emerge with designer handbags. They try to explain how great the stitching is on them. . .blah blah blah. . .I end up with a new pair of puma shoes (not supposed to be fake) and we head away. We later meet up with Canadian blog inspiration friend and her friend at a rooftop bar. We had a great time learning about the Kibbleses and about the awesome Brazil festival we all missed right outside our hotel. Big thanks and a howdy ya'll to Kim and Mike for hanging out with "the Texans."

Sometime that night at that club, a certain fashion conscience member of our traveling circus realized that true fashion innovation isn't coping the latest high priced trends carried at "her store," but creating your own individual look and carrying yourself in it no matter how it looks to others (I predict this revaluation has faded).

Final day involved DC team member disappearing into the hazy morning to catch an earlier flight, an early jog for those of us remaining (no Today show, THANK GOD) and lots more walking until collapsing of exhaustion, heading to the airport and flying off into the sunset.

In conclusion, I think that for my future visits to NYC, I will try to say with locals so I can get to know another side of the city. This of course will require me to befriend some locals (I tried to nudge my flight companion to help me with this on our return flight. She had the middle seat and was lucky enough to have an attractive young guy in the window seat. While listening in on his cell phone conversation while boarding, I learned that he is closing on a condo in Manhattan but will be traveling to Dallas every week for the next couple of months. Well, my traveling buddy did not see the same potential in our row mate and refused to flirt. We're going to have to work on that because now I still have no New York hook up.