Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Rebecca Relaxes in Manhattan (Friday)

I bet you were expecting 'Bex in the City', right? That would be just too easy.

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There have been problems with the photos loading, so I've split the post and hopefully that will fix the problem.


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Rebecca came out for the weekend to take a well deserved break and keep me company while Michael was in Las Vegas. She was nice enough to bring the California sunshine. We had warm weather and lots of sun - it was a fabulous weekend.

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Rebecca arrived late Thursday night. While she slept in Friday morning I finished up my work for the week. Luckily it was really quiet at work (at least Friday was really quiet - quarter end close kept me up late earlier in the week) and I was able to take off early. We had lunch at a local pub - the food is pretty good but the beer is better.

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It was such a nice afternoon, we decided to walk through Central Park. The park was packed, everyone was enjoying the great weather. We walked from the Reservoir all the way to the Plaza Hotel. (That is from the middle of the park to the southern end - about 30 blocks.)

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We took a picture of The Plaza for Maddie - Eloise had to move out while it's under renovation. It's scheduled to open October 2007 in time for it's 100th anniversary. Right now most of the front is hidden under scaffolding and construction equipment.

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After a quick look at The Plaza we headed to FAO Schwartz. The park made us a little peckish, so we settled in for a HUGE ice cream sundae at the FAO dessert counter. Luckily we decided to share - six scoops of ice cream, caramel sauce, M&Ms, whip cream and a cherry later we were refreshed enough to head back out in to the streets of mid-town. It's pretty hard to see in the picture below, but the counter was all glass with marbles underneath - it looked so cool! It is much easier to see the remains of our sundae.
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After FAO Schwartz we headed East. I was distracted by the shiny things in the Swarovski crystal store window and almost managed to get us killed. Retail therapy was in order after avoiding oncoming traffic on Madison Ave. A quick stop at H&M proved unfruitful, so it was on to Bloomingdale's. We did some valuable research in the purse department in preparation for our trip to Canal St. Saturday morning. Since our pocketbooks could not afford the pocketbooks at Bloomie's we headed to one of my favorite stores in NYC: Dylan's Candy Bar.
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Dylan's is bright, fun, plays great music and has every candy your heart desires.
Did you know 'stressed' spell backwards is 'desserts'?
Amazing the things you learn from a t-shirt.
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Speaking of desserts Dylan's also boasts an ice cream parlor. Look at all of the amazing sundaes they offer - next trip we'll have to hold out and see if their ice cream is better than FAO Schwartz.
(And even though this sundae was amazing, the Disney Soda Fountain in Hollywood serves the best pink peppermint ice cream - an absolute 'must' if you are in the area.)
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Rebecca found some treats for the kids and we decided it was getting to be time to head home. While we were in Dylan's we found out Rebecca's niece was going to be in town on Saturday. She was on a school trip and was going to have free time from noon until 7pm. She was excited to join us on a Canal St. adventure - little did she know it really would be an adventure she'll remember for many years to come.
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We enjoyed Nick's pizza for dinner - delicious thin crust wood fired New York pizza. I also introduced Rebecca to my favorite new drink the Coke Blak Mountain (what is that you ask? double espresso vodka and Coke Zero)- an instant classic. We also mixed pomegranate vodka with diet gingerale for a nice Shirley Temple with a kick. To go with our cocktails we watched 'The Departed'. Rebecca easily pointed out all of the fake Boston accents - some of them were really bad, those actors (you know who you are) should be embarrassed. And she was not surprised when the bad boys hailed from Brockton MA!