After several months of planning, since March to be exact, the day of out family trip to New York City arrived. For months, I had been asking the girls what activities, sites, or foods, they wanted to be sure to experience while we’re here and the list seemed to grow longer with each passing day. I made reservations for various activities and restaurants beginning in about July to ensure that we’d have our choice of times. But, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself-I’ll get to all of those things in due course. And, if you’re curious as to the title-it’s a Dylan song-look it up.
So, 4:15am on November 22nd came. The girls had already loaded their suitcases in the car and by 4:50 we were driving to FastPark to drop off the car. Erin had made reservations for us and while spots were available, it did ease the check in process as we simply scanned her phone and parked. The shuttle dropped us at the terminal and we went upstairs to the main check-in area. If you’ve ever been to Terminal 2 at RDU, I’ll tell you how long the line for security was. The line was in the normal spot, then wrapped around the American counter before ending somewhere around Delta. So yea, it was long. To give folks an idea of how long it was who have not had the pleasure of RDU, I’d compare it to waiting in line at Disney World for Spaceship Earth (during the glory years of the mid 90s). But, to the credit of everyone there, it moved quickly and we were through that line within 20 minutes or so. At that point, all that was left was to grab some food and wait for the flight.
The plane was small. Like really small. Small enough that when I stood up I had to duck. Yes, me. Duck. It was a new experience and kind of neat. The flight was a quick one and at 9:30 we were pulling up to the gate at LaGuardia. I’m not altogether sure what the best way to get to Manhattan from LaGuardia is, I can only tell you what we did. We split into two cabs, I had Ethel and my Mom and Erin got to ride with my dad and Lucy. Our driver was silent the whole way whereas Erin’s driver was Irish and according to her didn’t stop talking the entire way. I’d think that would be fun to have such an enthusiastic driver. I’m just glad ours didn’t get us killed. We all arrived at the hotel, Cambria Hotel and Suites, Times Square, around the same time. Initially it didn’t look like we were going to be able to check in since we were fairly early, but the really nice front desk employee got us all in our rooms. So that was nice. We were able to drop our bags, settle in a bit, freshen up some, and then head out. I had made lunch reservations for 3:30 that afternoon fully expecting there to be some snafu along the way, but no, everything had proceeded quite smoothly to this point. Almost too smoothly…(Bum bum bummmmm…..)
So I can’t stress this part enough. We had from basically 10:45-3:30 to kill and no real plan. Have a plan. Even if it everything falls to pieces at least there was a plan. I didn’t plan for everything to work. I mean, come on, it is me after all. But then I remembered, Ethel wanted to go to Carlo’s Bakery. Apparently, this guy has a show on TV or something and she watches it, so we went. This would not be the only time I ventured into gluten-land on this day. I will admit though, that the stuff looked great, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I guess that is all that really matters. Then I remembered she wanted to go to M&M’s World. So we did. With every other kid in mid-town Manhattan. I mean dear lord this place was busy. There were kids crying, kids screaming, kids running, parents crying, parents screaming, and parents running (mostly after kids, but they may have been trying to get to the personalize your M&M thing). If you’ve been to the one in Vegas, or London, or Shanghai you’ve no need to come here. If you’ve not been to one go to the store and buy a bag of M&Ms. You’ll never know the difference. We let the girls do the personalization thing and while neat, it was NOT worth the 20 bucks. Each. But whatever. It killed time.
So like settlers wandering around the frontier we plodded onward. Lunch time was coming soon and that was exciting for all of us. This was when we stumbled, not unintentionally, on one of the highlights of the day. We ended up at Rockefeller Center. The workers were taking the scaffolding down from around the tree, the plaza was decorated, and there were skaters on the ice rink. Between the cool architecture of the building and the decorations, there was definitely a cool vibe here. Across the street, Saks had decorated their windows for the holidays so we took a look at those and then finally headed towards some food.
The past two times I had been to NYC, we ate at a place called Carmine’s. I’m not going to pretend that I made some discovery of a hidden gem. The place is firmly in the heart of Times Square and at 3:30 on a Wednesday was telling walk-ins that there was over an hour wait. So, no I didn’t find a quiet place to eat. Also, the previous two times I had been, I was firmly in camp pasta. This was around 7 BC (before celiac). The place had gotten fairly decent reviews on the gluten-free app so I went for it. The Caesar Salad (no croutons) was fantastic, the Penne Alla Vodka (rice noodles) was great, and the Chicken Scarpriello was wonderful. Erin and I washed ours down with the house chianti, because honestly it felt right and the girls had strawberry lemonade. My parents and the girls also split a non-GF spaghetti and meatballs that looked wonderful. And now, typing this at 6:30 on Thursday morning, I can happily say that there were no nasty repercussions from this glorious meal.
It was now closing in on 6 and we didn’t want to call it just yet. Erin had the idea to go ride the Staten Island Ferry. We bought our unlimited ride metro cards and headed to the ferry. I think everyone appreciated the ride and when we got to the terminal we waited about 2 minutes before boarding. They wouldn’t let us on the deck heading over, but on the way back they did and we got some great views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. Very cool and very free. A couple of trains later and we were all home by 8:30 or so. The girls came up to the room and Erin and I hit the adjacent pub for a drink before heading up. At 9:30 about 17 hours after getting up, my head hit the pillow and I closed out being 40.
