NYC

I love NYC ~ even though it's a total tourist destination. We went for our 7th anniversary. The first day was bone chilling cold yet we braved the lines to get on the Staten Island Ferry to the Statue of Liberty (BTW you need tickets to see ~ apparently none are available until spring). We went up in the Empire State Building and rode around on a City Sights Double Decker Bus (I think I would recommend Grey Lines over City Sights). We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe and went on the night tour with the City Sights, this took us around to see all the Christmas lights and a stop at Grand Central Station. We couldn't even get close to Rockefeller on this tour ~ they had a detour because of the Hanukkah celebration. We actually were stuck at a stoplight for about 20 minutes because of the Hanukkah celebration ~ there were several vehicles with the Menorahs on top of them that were driving through the city give out things and music blaring from their vehicles. It was very interesting to see. We stayed at the Hilton NY which was just down the street from Radio City Music Hall. On Sunday, we woke up and headed straight to Macy's to see Santa. What an event that was! It went smoothly b/c we got there so early. The decorations were fabulous. We looked at all the decorated windows at Macy's ~ the theme every year is Miracle on 34th Street. When we left Macy's it had already started raining but at least it wasn't as cold as the precious day. We also did the NBC studio tour ~ we saw the SNL stage, Jimmy Fallon's studio. We learned about a 7 sec delay on television so they have no more Janet Jackson incidents. At the end of the day we decided to go see a movie, so we went to see Up in the Air and afterward we found an amazing Italian (Daniela) restaurant to celebrate our 7th anniversary at. I felt like I was back in Europe!! Monday was our last day in NYC, so we got up went for a walk up to Central Park, down 5th Avenue and made our way to Rockefeller center. While at the NBC studios we saw Kathy Lee and Hoda talking to James Cameron about Avatar. Our last event was the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. We had an interesting taxi driver back to the airport. He was telling us how Bloomberg is trying to get the middle class out of Manhatten. They ticket people like crazy in NYC but the cops that are there to manage the streets hang out of site and socialize ~ until an opportunity to ticket someone.