NYC

A long time ago, I started a blog post about when I visited Jack in New York. But I never finished it, and it never got posted, and now it just reminds me of when I'm telling Jack a semi-boring story and I get distracted by something in the middle of it, and then I never finish the story because it's just not that exciting anymore. But I just need to stick it out and post this dang thing! So here we go.

While Jack was in New York this summer, I was lucky enough (thanks to my in-laws who spoil me rotten) to get to visit him about halfway through his time there. I was so excited to see Jack, I could hardly sleep on the plane! Also, I couldn't recline my seat, so that may have had something to do with it. I arrived on a Thursday morning and left on Sunday night. We had a lot to see and not a lot of time! Our first stop on the way to Jack's dorm was Central Park. Such a cool place! I wish I could have three days to explore it.

Really expensive and adorable things in a Jonathan Adler store.

My dream couch in the best antique store in the world.

It took me three days to eat this cookie from the famous Levain bakery. So rich!

The view from Jack's dorm room.

 Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the bus stop in front of the King Burger. This was right by our hotel, which was in the most ghetto neighborhood I've ever been to in my life. Modesto has nothing on Jamaica, NY.

Washington Square Park. 

 This is the freedom tower at Ground Zero. Pretty cool! It will be even taller when it's done.

This is across the street from Ground Zero - the cutest little church and cemetery you've ever seen. It's the oldest public building in continuous use in NYC or something like that. 

This is my new favorite store in the whole world - Fish's Eddy! I wanted to buy all of it. It was all so cheap too! Jack's just lucky that I had no room in my suitcase. 

We waited in line forever in Times Square for cheap Broadway show tickets.  We wanted to see How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying because Daniel Radcliffe is the lead, but they sold out. We got tickets for Mary Poppins instead, and it was so amazing! Jack got to see the How to Succeed one the week after I left, and he says Daniel Radcliffe was really good. 

When we were in line we got stuck in the biggest rainstorm of my entire life! I've never seen rain fall so fast and hard. And the thunder echoing off the buildings made it extra dramatic! Luckily we had an umbrella, but we still got so soaked that only the top of our heads were dry.

We saw these everywhere. And one of the screens in Times Square had a little bit on Mormon.org too. Pretty cool.

The flatiron building! We were kind of in a rush to find it because we needed to eat dinner before our show started. We came out of the subway and couldn't see it anywhere! But the blue dot on google maps on my phone said we were right on top of it! It wasn't until we wandered a block away to see if we could find it that we looked back and realized we had been standing right under it, haha - geniuses. It's so cool.

The beautiful theater where we saw Mary Poppins.

We waited about an hour and a half to get into Grimaldi's pizza. Here we are at the front of the line, hot and sweaty! Finally! I didn't think it would even be worth it, but it was! It was soooo yummy. Don't get me started because I'll explain the layers of ingredients to you and everything. (The sauce went on last? What?)

This was on Saturday, and it was the last picture we took. We were so burned out. This was on Staten Island. It was so cute and tiny and quiet compared to the city. Jack was trying to be cheeky and make a disgusted face to ruin the picture but he turned out looking super handsome. Sorry, better luck next time! I was hoping to get a good shot of the city from across the water, but it was so smoggy that you could hardly see it.

 Some other fun things we did:

-Shake Shack - so yummy, but I still prefer In-n-Out

- Museum of Natural History

-Madewell and H&M

-visited some You've Got Mail locations

-Brooklyn Flea Market

-saw the temple 

-saw real live subway rats, so cute

I wish we could have:

-walked across the Brooklyn bridge

-gone to the MOMA and Met

We'll just save those for next time! I hope this post will help me remember it all. I went to Beijing after high school graduation and I can hardly remember any of it! I wish I would have had a blog back then! I don't know when we'll be able to go back to NYC, but I hope it's not too long. I guess my final impression of NYC is....how can anyone live there? But also, why don't I live there?