Living a Blessed Life

Sad, but true... This is our last day in NYC. :-( We woke up to the ting of rain hitting our window air conditioner in the hotel room. It was grey and cool outside. I suppose that means that our trip is finished. We are leaving on the perfect day! After packing our belongings and great ‘finds’ into our luggage, we headed out for one last meal in the Big Apple. The hotel desk staff recommended a little diner called The Red Flame. It was about 1 block from our hotel, so we headed out with our umbrella’s (that matched the lining of our purses) held high. I know. The Red Flame… Sounds like a mix of Japanese & Asian cuisine. BUT, let me tell you that it was a very busy, quaint little diner with delicious home cooked foods. Between the six of us, we had omelets, waffles, French toast, eggs, and pancakes. Delish ! The aroma of coffee and breakfast was quite appealing. Love it!! Time to head back to the hotel and check out. Darek and I looked up some more travel options to the airport tha...

Once again I am writing today about the previous day. :-) Yes indeed it was my 21st birthday, again! Crazy how that works. ;-) No, really, it was my 28 th birthday. YIKES!!! That's pretty darn close to 30! What a wonderful birthday celebration I had, being in NYC. First things first. I had to get my morning breakfast cupcake from Magnolia bakery!! Haha !! It was delicious, as I knew it would be. They even sold candles and cupcake toppers for birthdays, so Emily bought one of each and we found a smoker with some matches to light the candle. It was a fun, quick birthday morning celebration. :-) Next, we headed to the #1 subway and went all the way to the last stop 'South Ferry'. This is where we checked in for the Statue of Liberty cruise and climb into her crown. It sure was a good thing that we bought our tickets a few months ago, because they were sold out for the day - AND the wait in line just to get to the island was going on 3 hours. WOAH , baby! We went to the 'r...

Sunday was a VERY productive day of fun and sight-seeing adventures. It was so much fun, in fact, that I didn't have time to blog. We were up so late that I could barely keep my eyelids up by the time we got back to the hotel room. Let the adventures begin! We slept in a little longer this morning, and took the 'R' train to Ground Zero. We were able to get a glimpse of the memorial site, and the current building projects. They are in the process of building 2 new 'freedom' towers (even though the current name of them is supposed to be something different). There will be 1 main tower for the World Trade Center, and another for residential living, as far as I understood. Mike, Emily, Jerry & LuAnn took a tour while Darek and I decided just to hang out. We ended up finding a fun, HUGE store that Emily C told us about called Century 21. I thought it might be a real estate store, but it was nothing like that. It was great fun!! Tons of designer things at great disc...

Saturday turned out to be a fantastic day, despite the Twins loss. This day was particularly devoted to the Yankee's / Twins game, and anything that had time to follow. Here is the day in a big nutshell. :) 9:30 - Breakfast at the Cranberry Cafe' again. It's such a great place, and I really love how close it is to the hotel. I guess you can't get much closer to 'next door'. Once we were finished eating, we headed to Grand Central Station to catch the #4 bus to the Bronx - Yankee Stadium. We were really proud of ourselves for knowing where we were going and how to get through the station with our 7 day unlimited ride passes. We were starting to feel like 'regulars'. Haha ! That being said, we waited for our train for about 15 minutes, only to learn that our train was not coming. That track was closed for weekend maintenance, so we were switched to another train that was running the #4 route. We had a great ride to the stadium, and we talked to Twins fans ...

Day II adventures in NYC! We started the morning out with breakfast at this adorable cafe' type bakery establishment called the Cranberry cafe'. They have a wonderful variety of fresh foods, including made to order breakfasts. I chose to eat from the self serve (buffet style) fruit bar. Mangoes, strawberries, kiwi, pineapple, & oranges filled my plate with a touch of yogurt. YUMMY! Darek chose not to eat breakfast, as usual. He watched and patiently waited for us to finish, so we could begin our adventures for the day. First stop - a US Post Office. I purchased a few postcards yesterday to send off to some of my friends & family, and needed postage so I could send them off right away. I asked a nice man in one of the gift shops yesterday if he could sell me 3 postcard stamps and his reply... "$4.50" WHAT?!?!??! I quickly declined his generous offer and proceeded to look up the nearest post office. It was about 4 blocks from our hotel. Score!! It took a littl...

11:25AM - Flight Departed from MSP to LaGuardia in New York. Our flight was great, despite the turbulant take-off and landing. :-) Either our pilot was new, or really needed to retire! We had aisle seats, so we were across from each other instead of being next to one another. It only became a nuisance a couple of times when we were talking or trying to share music / games with each other. We enjoyed the company of our row-mates, though. 3:10PM - Flight landed at LaGuardia!!! The views of the city from the plane (from what I could see) were spectacular! The buildings are huge, and never ending! We picked up our baggage, and were kindly greeted by a ride service, offering to take us (and the other 4) to our hotel for $75. Our driver's name was Carlos, and he had a Lincoln Navigator to haul the 6 of us across the city. It only took about 30 minutes to get to the hotel. Traffic was surprisingly light, considering that President Obama was coming in today. (Yippee! I hope you can sense m...