I wanna be a part of it…

… New York, New York!

I don’t know about overly large apples, but I do know the  “city that never sleeps” did a great job keeping me awake for almost all of my birthday weekend. So much for getting some much-needed rest!

We dropped the little man off at my mom’s house in Maine for “Gram Camp”, flew out of Portland (Oh, how wonderfully different from flying out of Logan!) and arrived in NYC on Friday morning after battling a hideous trek from JFK to our Times Square hotel.

We were pretty exhausted after only getting three hours of sleep but managed to go out to shop the Upper West Side and the garment district before grabbing a slice of pizza and making it to Avenue Q.  Avenue Q (for those of you who aren’t theatre junkies like I am!) is a ridiculously clever musical performed with puppets (think Jim Henson) and a lot of adult themes.  Some of the song titles include “The Internet is for Porn”, “If You Were Gay”, and “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”.  I’ve been wanting to see this show for years and it was worth the wait!

After the show we wandered… a lot… before settling on some excellent Chinese and Thai food at 11:30pm.

The next day we got up and hit the TKTS booth to see what we could score for a matinee and then headed to SoHo for a delicious brunch in a tiny restaurant.  I had the best bacon I’ve had in years… it literally melted in my mouth!  I am going to be seeing that bacon in my dreams… little strips floating around in my head…

We then hiked over to Purl SoHo, a *gorgeous* fabric and fiber arts shop.  I spoiled myself and bought some new pretties to sew with. 

We barely made it back in time to see American Idiot, the rock musical from the band Green Day.  We were lucky enough to catch one of the last special shows that featured the lead singer of Green Day, Billy Joe Armstrong, starring in one of the supporting roles.  This too was a great show, although obviously very different from Avenue Q.  The music was awesome… Billy Joe was surprisingly great as well.  Money well spent!

We recovered from the day back at the hotel for a while, then headed to Little Italy for dinner.  We wandered for what seemed like forever (this seems to be a “thing” with us…) before settling on a corner place on the main street. 

At this point I have to confess that we had some wine.  A lot of wine. 

See… this is what happens when you take pictures after drinking.  Friends don’t let friends photograph drunk!!

I swear I thought this looked just GREAT when I took it ::eyeroll::

Then a little Caprese salad…

And…uhh… remember that wine?  At this point it was in full effect and I completely forgot to take photos of the rest of the meal.  Ryan ordered some insane tortelloni in pancetta cream sauce and I had a steak with risotto and we split the dishes. 

The only thing that sucks about New York is that by the time you get “home” the wine has worn off. 

We had grabbed some cupcakes from the world famous Magnolia Bakery for dessert later that night.  They were good but frankly I like my OWN more! I found them dry and the frosting was too sweet. 

We left in the morning with too little rest, aching muscles from walking, and great memories in our back pockets.  The trip back to Maine was uneventful, we picked up The Boy, drove back to MA and pretty much collapsed. 

I give this birthday weekend two thumbs up!

Now if only I had another weekend to do nothing but sleep…