New York City (Part II)

I can't do three jam-packed days' worth of New York City in one measly post.  I won't.

When we looked out our hotel window on the second morning of our trip, the weather was reminiscent of the day before: cloudy, cold, and wet.  Much to our delight, however, it wasn't actually raining.

We didn't stay on Manhattan.  We chose a hotel in Queens for a couple of reasons: 1) It was a gazillion times cheaper this way;  2) It was by the airport, which made it convenient for our late flight into NY and our early flight out.  So, we hopped on the subway to go into the city for our first stop of the day: the TEMPLE.  As we went to bed the night before, our first night of bustling "big city life", we looked forward terribly to going to this place.

It was absolutely wonderful.  Calm, quiet, reverent, clean, light, peaceful, heavenly.  I loved how I couldn't even hear a single decibel of the goings-on of the noisy city outside those walls.

Next was the American Museum of Natural History.  It was phenomenal.

For dinner we found a Japanese restaurant we thought would be fun to try.  It was authentic.  We were the only non-Asian people in there and the menu only had a few words in English.  We ordered some yummy food and, props to me, I ate my entire meal with chopsticks - a first.  I've tried in the past, but have given up mid-meal because I just can't get it.  Well, this time I didn't have a choice.  There was no silverware provided!  It was painstaking and slow, but I did it.

After that came something we were looking forward to probably more than anything.  It's another one of those I'm-the-last-one-left-on-the-planet-to-do things: seeing the very popular Broadway musical WICKED.  It met and exceeded all our expectations (we didn't really know what to expect as we hadn't learned too much about it, other than everyone who sees it absolutely loves it).  Seeing it on Broadway was certainly a highlight of the trip. 

 After the show, we walked to Times Square.  Holy cow.  I can't figure out if or when people sleep in this city, the aptly-named "city that never sleeps".  Are they all tourists, which means they don't have to get up and go to work in the morning?  Okay, that makes a lot more sense.  But if not, how do they have functioning lives on such little sleep?  Perhaps I just require more sleep than a lot of people...

 

We got to bed at about 1:00a.m., delightedly exhausted.