New York, New York, It's a Wonderful Town

 What an amazing 5 days we just had in NYC for spring break!  I've been looking forward to this trip for a long time and it didn't disappoint!

We left bright and early Saturday morning for our flight to Newark.  The flight was uneventful and we all caught some sleep.  Upon arrival, we got a bagel and coffee and headed to the bus that would take us to Bryant Park in the City.

While at the airport, we informed Evie that she would be seeing Hamilton that night as her first Broadway show, which was the big surprise we'd been sitting on for months!

Our bus trip was fun and we pointed out the city skyline to Evie as we made our way to the Lincoln Tunnel.  We walked the couple of blocks from the bus drop off point over to our hotel, got all checked in, and then started our site seeing.  We were staying in Times Square, so it was a little hectic and touristy, and Evie got a little overwhelmed at first, but I kept reminding her that she was safe and that most of the people there were tourists just like us and not out to hurt her (she's still dealing with some agoraphobia and anxiety from the pandemic that I'm trying to help her push past).

In front of the Times Square New Years Eve ball

We walked over to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum because we kinda like those tourist trappy things.

Posing with Colbert

Payphone, the relic

With Audrey Hepburn

Biking E.T.

In the Oval Office

Kidnapped by King Kong

Typical of her sweet nature, Evie did a runway walk with a little girl who was too timid to do one on her own.

We ate at Gordon Ramsey's Fish and Chips restaurant across from our hotel and then took naps so we could be well rested for the show.  We got dinner at the Times Square McDonald's and then headed to the Richard Rodgers Theatre for Hamilton. 

Waiting outside for the house to open

Picture with the stage

Prior to our trip, I pulled some strings with some connections to get Evie an audience with Euan Morton who plays King George, Evie's favorite character.  We got to spend 15 minutes post-show with just him where he kindly interviewed Evie about her own theatre experience and they discussed good ways to get into character for Toto.  He talked about how fortunate he was that university in the UK is free (he's a Scot), so he was able to pursue his dream of acting without any pressure from his parents or finances to inform his career choices and he said Evie should be grateful for having parents who support her exploration of fine arts.  Very kindly received by us (and it's generational)!

Evie and Euan Morton

He signed her playbill in the top left corner, "Evie, all my love, Euan"

We walked home with happy hearts and went to bed.

Sunday morning we slept in a bit and intended to have breakfast at Ellen's Stardust Diner where Broadway wanna-bes double as servers and entertainers, singing songs while they deliver your pancakes.  But the line was incredibly long, so instead we had ate at a little cafe that had bagels and enormous chocolate muffins.  We killed some time strolling around the less touristy part of Broadway on our way to the Gerswhin Theatre, where we saw Wicked.

This show was not a surprise - it was a Christmas present - and Evie had such a good time seeing it, especially since she is currently playing Toto in The Wizard of Oz.  After the show, we got cheesecake at a bodega and then made our way to Central Park for a surprise carriage ride, something she's been asking to do every time we go downtown in Memphis.

Evie enjoyed feeding our horse his carrot.

We headed back to the hotel to warm up in our beds and watch some of the Oscars and then went to dinner at a little French restaurant just a couple of doors down from our hotel.  

Monday morning we grabbed a bagel from the bodega across the street and hailed a cab to take us down to the Financial District (I wanted to ride the subway, but my bougie family did not).

First we went to Trinity Church where Alexander Hamilton and others are buried and found their graves.  Evie kept asking where Phillip was, but his exact gravesite isn't known.

Inside the church

Alexander Hamilton's burial marker

Then we went to Federal Hall where George Washington was inaugurated, and then went by the NYSE.

Outside the NYSE

Then we switched gears and took the train to Greenwich Village where we went to the Museum of Illusions, which was a lot of fun and had scientific explanations for these optical and other types of illusions.

Tilted room

Repeating Evies

We had lunch at a Japanese place and then we found ourselves with time to kill.  Seth jokingly said he had enough time to get a tattoo and I suggested he get something pierced, and Evie piped up with, "We can get my ears pierced!"  I didn't know she'd even been considering it, but she seemed very sincere and said she really wanted to do it, so we found a piercing parlor and she got them done!

Last look at her non-pierced ears

Hard to see but her ears are pierced here

She said it hurt more than she'd been told by friends who've had theirs pierced, but we got her some pain medicine and she soldiered on to our next stop, the Museum of Ice Cream  This place was a lot better than I'd expected.  They had lots of selfie spots, which I thought they would, but they also had interesting exhibits on the history of ice cream, ice cream flavors around the world, etc.  They had plenty of fun activities for kids and also five, count them, five opportunities for you to eat ice cream.

First ice cream tasting

Ice cream subway car

In case five cups of ice cream aren't enough, you can also enjoy cotton candy

The ball pit of sprinkles, or as one little boy of about age 5 said, "pink and white hot dogs"

A first person view of sliding into the sprinkle pool

After the museum of ice cream we had about an hour and a half to make our way just a few blocks to our dinner reservation, so on the way stopped at, of all things, a Crate & Barrel to kill some time.  We had been complaining about how terrible the beds were in our hotel room (everything else was great, but the beds were way too firm) and Evie kept trying out various chairs and sofas and saying we should buy them and have them sent to our hotel room to replace the bed.

We then headed to dinner and Monte's Trattoria, where we'd signed up to also see a magic show.  I wasn't able to get any pictures, but they did a lot of impressive sleight of hand and Evie was enthralled.  We had dinner while magicians circulated through our tables (there were only about 40 people there) and then the headline magician did a very impressive show where he not only performed the typical slight of hand/illusion tricks but also an incredible feat of memory, where he'd memorized words across pages and pages of different books which he then called on audience members to help identify and verify.  He's been on Penn and Teller and some late night talk shows, and it was pretty cool to see him in person.  It was about 11:00 pm when the show was over, so we caught an Uber back to the hotel.

Tuesday morning we slept in a bit and watched the snow from our hotel window.  We decided we preferred the snow to the train we'd experienced the day before because with the snow, we didn't get as wet.  We went to Junior's for brunch and cheesecake.

While Seth and I preferred the cheesecake we'd had at the bodega on Sunday, Evie was a big fan of her Brownie Explosion cheesecake.  

We had tickets to MOMA at 1:30 so we made our way there in a leisurely manner.  As we crossed 7th Avenue we noticed a film crew shooting a scene for "Untitled New York Christmas Movie", which I'm sure we'll someday know the title of.  We decided to be "those" tourists and stand and watch the filming, out of the way so as not to ruin the movie.  I'm sure they'd been waiting for a snowy day to film the Times Square scene.  We'll be on the lookout for a Christmas movie with a lady in a pink and black checkered peacoat.  I didn't recognize any of the actors.

Once we lost interest in the filming, we strolled through the Disney Store to kill some time and then hoofed it through the cold the rest of the way to MOMA.  Seth tried to explain modern art to us (I still don't get it).

This one was Evie's. They had a section where kids could create their own art.  I thought it was just as worthy as anything we saw in the museum.

We hit up FAO Schwartz afterwards and Evie had a great time playing the piano from Big.  Of course, it's not the real piano from that movie, and she hasn't seen that movie, but she enjoyed it nonetheless, and I tried to play "Heart and Soul".

We went back to the hotel to rest for a bit and then headed to Gyu-Kaku, a japanese barbecue restaurant where they have cooking grills embedded into the tables and you cook your own meat.  Evie really enjoyed being our griller for the evening, especially once we got to the marshmallow dessert round.

A little concerned about the height off the flames

More confident now

Dessert round

 After dinner, we headed to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre which is just across the street from the Richard Rodgers, and we indulged in our biggest splurge of the trip.  On Saturday night when we were in line for Hamilton, we noticed a huge line in front of the Lunt-Fontanne and wondered what was showing there.  Turns out it was previews for Sweeney Todd starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford.  I admit, I hadn't heard of Annaleigh Ashford, but Josh Groban I knew of and I do love a good Sondheim show.  I last saw Sweeney Todd when I was a freshman in college (unless you count the Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter movie - which I don't), and I jokingly said to said we should go.  We kept kidding about it until Sunday night when we decided to just look up how much tickets were - they weren't cheap, but they weren't as outrageous as we'd expected.  We decided, you only live once, and this was a chance to see something that might get nominated for Best Revival or Best Actor or Best Actress Tony Awards.  Our only hesitation was whether Evie would be able to handle it.  It's got some themes that are treated comically (cannibalism as a method to hide murder) and some that aren't comical (rape), but we ultimately decided that she might appreciate some of the dark tones, 'cause she's kinda into that, and would definitely appreciate the puns.  So we got 3 of the 20-something tickets that were available for resale on Sunday night, and on Tuesday evening we found ourselves in line (should I say, on line) for Sweeney Todd.  

I reluctantly share this terrible picture of me, but its a great one of Evie and she's the star of this blog anyway.

It was hard for me to tell during the show whether Evie was enjoying it because she was looking very serious whenever I glanced her way, but she was concentrating hard on understanding the lyrics (Sondheim lyrics are very wordy) and the plot.  She asked me a few clarifying questions and I checked in with her to make sure she understood what had happened after each scene.  Then, we we got to "A Little Priest", she was in stitches - in part because Annaleigh Ashford (who was absolutely brilliant, way better than Groban, and I full expect to see nominated for a Tony for this role) missed her jump to sit on top of the counter and instead landed on her bum on the floor, rolled around on her back like Humpty Dumpty, crossed to offstage for a running start at the counter sit again, all while singing her bit in character as Mrs. Lovett.  The entire audience AND the actors were in fits, and Evie was loving every moment.  She declared after the show was over that it was her favorite of the three we'd seen!

Back to the hotel for our last night of sleep, and in the morning, we packed up, dropped our bags with the front desk, and made it to Ellen's Stardust Diner, where we still had a 30 minute wait at 10 am on a Wednesday.  It was worth it though, because we really enjoyed the atmosphere, the food, and the entertainment.

Our view from the balcony

After brunch, we took an Uber to catch our tour of the U.N., which had a focus on women - not just women of the UN but also the work the UN does to help women.  Evie was very inspired by our tour and entertained the notion of doing model U.N. in high school.

We had a late afternoon snack at a bodega and then caught an Uber back to the Museum of Broadway which was so much cooler than I thought it was going to be!  It's a recent museum so I thought it wouldn't have a lot to look at and would be mostly selfie-sites, but it was chock full of treasures from Follies costumes to handwritten lyrics to Rent, interactive videos so you could dance along with the Sharks and the Jets, and puppets from Avenue Q - they even had a whole section on stage managers!  

Follies girls

We headed back to our hotel, got our bags, and headed by to Bryant Park to catch our bus back to Newark.  We were a bit early and it was cold (as it had been our whole trip) so we got some hot chocolate and coffee from a stand in the park and enjoyed the last bit of sun for the day.

Unfortunately our return home was not smooth.  Our bus was late and then it wouldn't update with a status and we were worried we'd miss our flight so we paid an unreasonable amount of money to get an Uber that could fit us and our luggage and take us through the Lincoln Tunnel across state lines.  On our way, as we were looking at the city over our shoulders, I got a text alert that our flight was delayed by an hour and a half, which was infuriating because we could have just waited for the bus that showed up 20 minutes late.  Then, once we got to the airport all checked in and seated at a restaurant where we could chill for a while, we got a notice that our flight was delayed some more and the gate had been moved to another terminal.  We got to the new gate and the flight was delayed again.  We were support to leave around 9:30, but the plane didn't get to our gate until almost midnight, and then once we boarded it, we had to wait again because some part or another needed to be replaced.  We finally took off about 12:30 am.  We slept some, but not much, and were glad when we got to be home in our own beds at about 3 am!

Despite the rough ending, we had the most amazing time and talked about coming back every 3 years or so to do shows and see more of the things we didn't get to this time!