[simage=29,200,n,left,] For work, I spent a week in upstate New York. We finished Friday afternoon, so I had the travel people fly me to NYC and leave me there till Sunday night so I could see the city. It was my first time in NYC and it was great.

I took a red-eye Sunday night to get there. I only found out I was going Thursday night, so that was the best flight available. For some reason, Fashion Week was happening and that filled up planes or something. I had a couple hours layover in JFK before my flight to Rochester. And guess what?! There are birds in the airport. Flying all over. Swallows I think. Perhaps they are used to carry coconuts.
[simage=30,200,n,right,] My flight from Rochester NY to NYC was canceled due to mechanical failures. Not cool. Delta was saying they couldn’t get me on anything until the next day. Way not cool. Thankfully, the travel people from work are WAY better than Delta and I got onto the last seat on a US Airways only a couple hours later. The plane was definitely a “puddle jumper”. But there is something kinda fun about flying into NYC in an airplane with propellers. It sounded like a plane with propellers too. Way fun. I even got to wander across the tarmac to get in the plane. Shout-out to US Airways for being cool. I showed them my baggage claim tag and they transferred my bag perfectly! I never thought the claim tags were useful. Turns out I was wrong.

I was able to get a great hotel on Priceline for about half the normal rate. I stayed at the Affinia Shelburne, about Mid-town East Side Manhattan. It was a great location for getting everywhere. A few blocks from the Grand Central where I could get subways to anywhere. Once I checked in Friday night, the lady at the front desk was able to give me directions for a great place for dessert. I went to Max Brenner. Lots of chocolate. Pipes running through the restaurant full of chocolate (at least they said they were). I got a chocolate pizza there. My picture of it didn’t come out :( But it was a pizza with chocolate chunks, bananas, peanut butter and roasted marshmallows. Awesome!

Saturday I visited some stores and the like. I saw the shrine for Apple fanboys :). I also went to F.A.O Schwarz, the Lego Store, and walked down down 5th Ave. Later I was at Times Square and went to Toys R’ Us. There is a Ferris Wheel INSIDE. And sadly the collection of Legos at Toys R’ Us was better than the Lego Store:

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That afternoon, I went to Wicked for the matinee performance. I was really happy about the seat I got. It was on the front row of the Mezzanine and I was able to see and hear everything wonderfully. It was an amazing production. The singing was amazing, the performance amazing. And the stage was amazing. Things would move around all by themselves! No people in black moving sets around. The moved themselves! Oh the wonderful world of Oz.

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The rest of that day, I just wandered to a few places including Ground Zero. There isn’t much there but construction fences, but it looks like it will be great once they finish. That night I went to dinner at a restaurant called wd~50. I was really excited. It is a nice “foodie” place where they do some interesting food. I have a whole other post about it. Check it out here.

Sunday was spend finding the church house (which is inside the Manhattan Temple), Central Park, then the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty. Then home. Very tired. All in all I liked NYC. I will probably have to go back another time.

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