48 Hours in NYC 1/4 - 1/6 2019

From here

to here

Sam's flight came in about an hour after mine, in the gate next door. We got our Metro cards, and took the bus and subway to Times Square and the Hotel St. James again

We grabbed a bit at the pub next door, checked out Times Square a bit, including the two story Disney store before turning in for the night.

Our room was quite a bit larger than last time and, thank to the tip from the front desk, calling them directly meant this room was less per night than the third party site from October's booking

We got up and out into the rain Saturday morning to a nearly empty Manhattan

The Tony Bennett was ah-MAZ-ing
 

We wandered through the southeast corner of Central Park after breakfast.

From there, we headed for MoMA

From there, we stopped in at the hotel to get Sammi's some bandages for her heels that were betting blistered, stopped in at Starbucks, and then got in line just ahead of 1:00 for the first play. 

The Lyric Theater was completely gutted and rebuilt as the new home for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

upstairs we grabbed a drink and waited for the doors to open 

 

Our seats were really good -- especially considering I'd lucked into the cheapest seats you can get, $20 per person for each show.

the curtain at the first intermission

the stage at the close of the first show

The first show, with intermission, ran nearly three hours. We emerged from the theater near sunset, still raining, with time for dinner before the second show would begin at 7:30.

I had booked us a table for 5:15 at Sardi's, which has been in the same place since 1927. 

There are thousands of caricatures filling every inch of the walls

directly across the street from Sardi's is my next target -- scoring tickets to Mockingbird for November (not yet on sale)

back in line for Part 2

 

sorry Griffindor, I didn't take one of yours

 

even the carpet has the Hogwarts "H" and symbols for the four houses: the quill for Ravenclaw, the sword for Griffindor, the leaf for Hufflepuff, and the blood drop for Slytherin

The whole experience was wonderful, but it was a true marathon -- from getting in line before 1:00 and getting out of part two after 10:00 that night. We were whupped and headed straight back to collapse into bed.

The next morning, we had packed and gotten down to leave our bags at check out by 8:00 that morning to get ourselves in line to ferry over to the Statue of Liberty and climb up into the crown.

yep, all the way to the tiny windows under those spikes on her crown

 

 

 

Sammi's face going up, versus going down

 

but we made it!

The tiny ant people way down on the edge of Liberty Island

climbing down, you can see the face of Lady Liberty among the scaffolding

then we walked around the pedestal 

and with that, we headed back to the ferry so we could do a bit more exploring before having to get back to the airport

we grabbed lunch at Joe Jr.'s diner, not far from Union Square

and then walked over to The Strand Bookstore

standard Sammi face :P

back to Union Square

and over to Grand Central

we walked from Grand Central to the hotel, got our bags, and then made the walk to the 49th Street station to ride back into Queens and catch the Q70 back to LaGuardia, where, once again, our flights were an hour apart and we were at neighboring gates.

end of our last 48 hours together until May, for graduation!

and back to Denver, back to reality and work and the end of holidays and trips for a good while.