travel | Lessons from my daughter

Do you know how much can be achieved between an early wake-up call and a late check-out?

Let me tell you about our last half day on NYC.

We got up around 7ish and Emily had a nasty head cold / sinus infection. I blame the Museum of Natural History for it. Their A/C was so high we nearly froze to death in there yesterday.

So….. DayQuil to the rescue!!!

An hour or so later, we were walking down 5th avenue towards the Rockefeller centre. Emily decided a couple of days ago that we were going to the Top of the Rock instead of going up the Empire State Building.

Our plan was to be there when the doors open to avoid a line-up. The plan worked perfectly and everything considered, its an over-rated & expensive elevator ride. Sure the views are beautiful but still…

We made it up and Emily refused to go outside…

That’s ok, we can work with that! Jon and I can rotate going outside.

Up one more floor and suddenly we are outside, no choices what so ever. Emily managed the outside for a little bit, just long enough to take this picture of Jonathan holding the Empire State Building. 🙂

Than she discovered what we named the light room… And we stayed there till Jon was ready to go back down.

Next stop.

The NBC store… We had to get some things there…

I can now pretend to be at Central Perk drinking coffee with my “Friends”. We also got minions for Emily and a t-shirt of some tv show I don’t know for Jon.

Next… we are back at the American Girl Place. Emily still had money burning a whole in her wallet so we HAD to go in again.

The employee who put Emily’s purchases through remembered her from earlier this week… It’s amazing how many people are remembering her at that store. Must be part of their training.

Before leaving the store we asked for recommendation on where to grab breakfast.

We went to the recommended Burger Heaven on 49th near 5th. I know it doesn’t sound like a breakfast place but they serve breakfast with a real “Pascale approved” size of coffee cup. First time in 6 days that my cup of coffee deserved to be call a cup of coffee!!!

The place was clean and you could feel the pride of ownership. A true gem!

At breakfast Jon kept talking about the HBO store… Because we hadn’t spend enough money already…

We walked to the HBO shop and bought a Merlotte t-shirt for Jon and I got a Fangtasia t-shirt… We are True blood fans!!!

Than we walked back to the hotel while Emily kept playing supermodel for me.

We wanted to stop at Starbucks and treat ourselves to overpriced coffee but they were too busy for my liking…

We kept walking and found a little independent shop near the hotel, we ordered 3 coffees. Emily wanted an iced cap … I think she got more caffeine than she signed up for…lol.

Once back at the hotel, we relaxed, finished packing and watched some tv before it was time to check-out at 1pm.

Next stop, the Hilton Huntington, Melville, NY for the 5p- Society conference.

Stay tuned for Day 6 part 2 tomorrow!

Day 1 was all about flying to NYC and the American Girl place.

After our afternoon tea at the American Girl place, we returned to our hotel for the night. I admit that I was asleep by 5:30pm and I don’t know when Emily and Jon went to sleep.

Day 2 started around 6am. We were all well rested and ready to discover this part of the city before moving to our hotel for the next 4 nights.

My dream was to stay at The Plaza while in NYC but they were full on Saturday so we booked a hotel near the American Girl Place. The Barclay. It’s a nice hotel, the staff was ok for the little we interacted with them and the room was really small but the bed was comfortable :).

We got up, showered and got dress. I packed our clothes and things again, adding the new doll and clothes to our suitcases. By 7ish we were walking on Lexington in search of a place to grab breakfast. We found a café metro and went in for breakfast.

Their 3 eggs omelet can feed 2. I wasted food which I try not to do normally but I truly didn’t see it coming.

This is Emily waiting for breakfast.

After a delicious breakfast we decided to keep walking.

We didn’t bring a map, we just walked for a while. We saw the Chrysler building and stumble upon Grand Central Station! How lucky. This was on Emily’s list as it was featured in Madagascar..

We found the whispering tunnel. Emily and Jon tried it while I took pictures. It was really cute to see them facing the corners like kids that were in trouble.
🙂

After the train station, we went back to our hotel, grabbed our suitcases and asked the bellman to get us a cab to the Plaza.

I’m like a kid in a candy store when I get to experience a hotel I’ve heard so much of. My original plan was to have a chauffeur pick us up at the airport on Saturday with an Emily sign, that way we would arrived in style at the hotel but as we couldn’t get in Saturday, I didn’t bother with the chauffeur. We arrived in a yellow NYC cab!

We had a large room with tons of space and a huge bathroom, with an amazing shower and super large tub. Marble and gold everywhere.

Some people might not be fan of this type of hotel but I was in paradise. I admit that my husband’s tattoos and my lack of desire to dress-up on vacations made us look a little out of place but I couldn’t care less. Emily did look in her element there. Just the right amount of movie star qualities in her!

Once we settled in, we went to FAO Schwartz and the “open 24 hours a day” Apple store.

There was a lot of apple geniuses (…) in there….

As we were next to Central Park and their zoo was on Emily’s list… This is where we went next.

Central Park is really beautiful. We will have to return to NYC one day to explore it more!

As for the zoo, its small so in my humble opinion, it was overpriced but Emily wanted to see the penguins (from Madagascar) so we did. It’s a good thing she wasn’t looking for the lion or zebra cause they are not there….

The one cool thing about the zoo? This picture below. We saw that in the movie which is not the entrance to the zoo but it didn’t matter, it made Emily happy.

When Emily is happy, we are all happy!

The Zootique (cute name for gift shop) saw the first tears of our trip. Emily wanted a stuff toy and we said no. She has too many and already bought a doll the previous day so she could get something but not a stuffed toy.

She cried, her quiet cry that almost made me changed my mind… But I didn’t. She told me about her big tiger that was destroyed in the flood we had 3 or 4 years ago…. The memory on that kid is just incredible…. And painful!

After tons of discussions, tears and partial stare from the staff of the Zootique, we left empty handed and walked back to our hotel.

By than, it was almost dinner time and all we had eaten that day was a huge breakfast and a pretzel at the zoo.

We decided to grab dinner at the food court under the Plaza… :). Food court!!! Well the mall here as a food court, under the Plaza is a whole other level of food court!

You can find fancy everything down there!

We ended-up sitting down at Todd English for dinner. We shared appetizers – a Squid dish and artichoke filled with crab and other things. Main course was Lobster Mac & Cheese for Emily and burgers for us. I love that I can pick how I want my burger cooked in the US… Here it’s always well done and most restaurant confuse well done with burned….

Our burgers were amazing, all of our food was delicious. My sangria was made with sparkling something in it which I should have known if I had read the menu properly…. I didn’t care for it and didn’t finish my glass… What a waste! Well from now on I will read the drink menu the same way I read the food menu.

We were sitting at a table for 8 and another family sat with us. They had a boy approximately Emily’s age and by the end of dinner we were chatting a little. They were NewYorkers and had input on what we should do while in NYC.

We talked for a bit than Emily and the cute boy talked about Broadway shows and museum….

Did you read that?

In a big city, at a fancy restaurant, my daughter chatted with some boy about shows and museums…. 😊

Once they left I told Emily how proud of her I was for talking to that boy and staying in reality, not talking about her pretend world. She replied that he was cute and that she was “totally flirting” with him…. 😳

That was so awesome because she totally did!!!

Back in our room, Emily got a special delivery from Eloise (you know the little girl who lives in the Plaza… If you don’t know google her!)