New York

We had a great weekend in New York. The beginning however, was not fun. Due to thunderstorms in New York, we were over four hours late. Unfortunately more than half of that time was spend on the plane waiting for permission to take off. Towards the end, even the pilot was frustrated by the long delay. Thank goodness for knitting and iPods. I was able to finish a market bag that I have been working on for a while. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

Anyway here is the view from our hotel room. At night the center white stripe in the middle of the building lights up in various patterns. It was really pretty. On Sunday morning, we could see two cruise ships docked at the pier, which is on the far left of the picture.

While Steve was in meetings on Friday, Melissa and I spent the day shopping. We found a couple of great stores full of buttons, ribbons and all kinds of trims imaginable. We also found a yarn shop and Melissa couldn't resist buying a couple of skeins of yarn to make a scarf with.

The highlight of the day (all three days really) was a stop a Pinkberry for this yummy treat.

On Friday night after a great dinner at Victor's (Cuban food, one of Steve's favorites) we went to see "In the Heights". It was one of the best musicals that we have ever seen.  

We happened to be walking by the theater on Saturday afternoon after the matinee so we waited to see if any of the cast members would come out. This is Robin De Jesus, one of the leads. He was very friendly, signing Melissa's ticket and posing with her for a picture. According to Melissa he gives good hugs. She was also able to get autographs from several other performers.

On Saturday night we went back after we saw Spring Awakening and were able to meet the author and star of the play, Lin-Manuel Miranda. He is so talented and was really nice to sign autographs and pose for pictures with everyone. Notice Melissa with the closed eyes!

If you want to see some of his work check out: these youtube videos

They are promotional videos for the show that are quite funny. 

On Saturday we took a boat cruise around Manhattan. It was a small boat, only 50 people and they had a great brunch. The weather was perfect and we took lots of pictures and Steve also made a video.

That evening we had dinner at Victor's again, love the watermelon mojitos and the dulce de leche gelato. After that we saw Spring Awakening. Right before the show started, this guy walked down the aisle and sat down two rows in front of us. Melissa turned to Steve and said, Isn't that..." and Steve said, "yes". It was Mel Gibson. 

On Sunday morning we had some money left on the subway card, so we took it to Central Park and had brunch at a little coffee shop. After that we took the subway back to Pinkberry for one last bit of swirly goodness (oh why isn't there any Pinkberry in Chicago?) before it was time to leave for the airport and home.