NYC Part 2 Recap

Friday Day 2-
So we wake up fairly early Friday morning and I REALLY had wanted to go to the Today Show and see the free concert-- the script was playing. So I put on the tv and was so motivated to go since we were only a few blocks away. Dustin is lolly-gagging like none other and we don't get out of the room until close to 9am. So we're walking extremely fast to Rockafeller Plaza and as we are about 2 blocks away they finish playing :( So we were still able to walk up and see the stage and setup, but no music and no Today Show correspondants. Dustin did get to visit the coolest store ever at Rockafeller- Nintendo World! So next we decided to go rent bicycles and tour Central Park. We had 2 hours to explore and think it was about 6 miles to do the outer loop of the park. You couldn't ride your bike on any of the inner paths, so was a minor pain to have to walk our bikes to some of the sites. It was nice, but just seemed like a larger version of Forest Park and areas of Forest Park definitely seemed nicer/better than this....so think we were just slightly disappointed. About 75% of the way through Dustin's handlebars come unscrewed from his bike so he has no steering ability! so we pull over and there is no way to fix it without a wrench....so we have no choice but to walk our bikes FOREVER out of the park and back to the bike shop. It was a pain to even walk his bike cause you couldn't just hold the handles to steer. So we are pissed off at this point cause it's HOT and we are super sweaty and sick of walking. We get to the bike shop and the lady is like- "oh, did you get insurance?" Um no, we didn't get the insurance cause we are not idiots going to ram our bike into a pole or something. She's like "oh, that is $349 fee then for returning the damaged bike." Ok, not damaged, just need to tighten the screw (which should have been done before you gave it to us)! So dustin just walks away from her and goes to get a manager who did the right thing immediately and gave US our money back for giving us a broken down bike we had to walk back!


After that we stopped at Carnegie Deli for lunch-- Dustin was in heaven cause the portions are HUGE. I'm not kidding when I say you'll get a sammy piled with 6 inches of meat. The lady next to us ordered soup and they brought the whole POT with a ladle! Dustin ate an enormous roast beef sammy. We had the best potato pancake ever here too!

After this we signed up for the double-decker bus tour and took a 2 hour tour of "uptown." Basically it just circles around central park. We toured the upper west side and saw the Dakota where John Lennon was shot. We saw the outskirts of Columbia University and Grant's Tomb. We saw like the largest catholic church or cathedral that is still in the process of being built cause they keep running out of money. Then we went through Harlem and saw the Apollo and shops there. Next we drove through upper east side that has many museums.

Then we went to MOMA - Museum of Modern Art- since it was free after 4 on Fridays. It wasn't all that great, but we got to see Von Gogh's Starry Night. We then went to the TKTS booth at Times Square to get discounted Broadway tickets. We ended up getting Rock of Ages tickets in the 8th row for 50% off!!!!! We run back to the room to shower and then grab dinner and the show. Only we get to our room and something had backed up into our shower leaving 4 inches of dirty hairy water. Took the hotel AN HOUR to get it drained and cleaned...so we didn't have time for dinner before the show. We did have time to hit up The Mean Fiddler next door to the theater though and get $5 martinis! And then they show was AWESOME!!!! ALL of our favorite 80s songs weaved into a decent story and Constantine from American Idol was the star. Dustin even said this was better than the yankees game! After the show we were outside and I spotted Catherine Zeta-Jones across the street and luckily my paparrazi mode kicked in and I snapped a picture of her just before they whisked her away into the car and had security yelling at us to STEP AWAY FROM THE CAR! I really did feel like paparrazi, but less obnoxious. Then afterwards we went to Becco which had been recommended to us by 3 people. It's $23 for some great bread, salad, and then unlimited amounts of 3 pastas. They also have $25 bottles of wine which Dustin insisted we order and which I definitely didn't need! We talked quite a bit with the people next to us who live in Clayton...small world! (And the people who sat next to us yesterday at Carnegie Deli had a daughter at Wash U, so they were familiar with St. Louis). Then it was off to bed to gear up for another full day!

NYC Part 1 Recap

You may be wondering- where's Gus been? Did she forget about this lame blog again? To answer your pressing questions, No- I didn't forget, I was too busy having a great time on vacation! We started by visiting my parents for 5 days in PA, then took the train to NYC for 4 days. I'm going to work backwards and first talk about our NYC adventures!

Thursday- Day 1
The train ride was pretty nice-- we went through Amish Country so we got to see tractors being pulled by horses on the farms. We arrived in NYC around 1pm at Penn Station, so we did some quick research on the train with all our maps and found that we just need to take this red subway and will drop us off a block from our hotel. So we jump on this red train that says it's going "downtown." Well 3 stops later we realize we are going in the wrong direction, so we hop off....exit the subway....walk across the street and figure this will get us on the other side of the tracks and we are all set heading the right direction now! Get back on the train and we are going in the same flippin direction as before! Note to self: the subway stations are MUCH bigger than St. Louis so there are multiple entrances to each side! So finally we are able to get on the subway going the right way...make it to the hotel to check-in....then head out to explore!

We walked over to the Ed Sullivan theater where David Letterman films. We went to Hello Deli to pick up a late lunch which is occasionally shown on Letterman and features Rupert the deli owner. We were amazed cause Rupert was there and took our order and the place was SO small-- only 3 tables to sit at with little stools-- something you'd see in a kindergarten room! The food was awesome-- it was like $8 and I got a huge sub that had fresh carved turvey with salami and pickle and cheese-- was like a Turkey Cuban sammy.

We then just walked around Times Square, the Broadway area, down to Macy's and checked out some stores. We then went to "Restaurant Row" which was just a cute street near all the theaters that has a bunch of non-chain restuarants. We went to House of Brews so Dustin could try a local beer and I could take advantage of their $5 happy hour for martinis and margaritas! Next, we headed up to the Bronx on the subway (and yes, rode it in the right direction this time!) to go to the Yankees-Rays game. We went early so we could check out the bars around the stadium, but it was very disappointing. I think we were envisioning something like Wrigleyville and it was more on par with St. Louis or worse. There was a big pit basically where the old stadium was and then less than 5 bars there. Stan's seemed to be the happening place, but was $10 beers, so we just went next door to this bowling alley which was just a tad less crowded and had $5 beers. The stadium also was not very exciting, especially for the Yankees. There just wasn't anything special about it....and the worst part was that I couldn't even find nachos! Who creates a ballpark without nachos?!?! I seriously thought those were standard at all games- ugh! We then headed back to Times Square and got some pizza by the slice at Ray's. Dusin had one with chicken fingers, pepperoni, and sausage I think.....it was AWESOME! I thought I'd try something different....but was not near as good. It was some sort of white pizza with no sauce and topped with just cheese and then big hunks of ricotta. It was good, but nothing like Dustin's. Then it was bed time!

Countdown to Vacation!

So only 2 more days and we'll be on a 9 day vacation!!!!!!!! For the first 5 days we'll be visiting my parents in central PA and then we'll be taking the train for 3 hours to NYC for the last 4 days. We are super excited for a combination of relaxing and sightseeing! We don't have a lot of plans, but we know we want to do the following at the very least:

• Cooperstown- Dustin is dying to go to baseball hall of fame
• Yankees game (Thurs night vs. Devil Rays)
• Broadway show- am aiming for Lion King cause neither one of us has seen it
• View Statue of Liberty-- probably will just take ferry to Staten Island to view it
• Try a good deli-- am leaning towards Katz's or Carnegie
• Get NY-style pizza-- heard Ray's was to die for, but am hoping we can try a slice here and there to try a couple places

These are not must do's, but things I'd like to do (and Dustin will probably veto):

• Rent bikes to explore central park
• Friday morning- stand outside the Today Show

And these are also not must do's, but on both of our lists, so will try to do as much as possible:

• Double-decker tour bus
• Empire state bldg
• WTC
• Museum Modern Art
• Times Square
• Rockafeller center
• Explore the different areas of town since each seem to have unique vibes

And last, but certainly not least....the number one thing I can't wait to do on this trip is devour a Mexican Sub from a childhood favorite restaurant!!!!!! Yum!!!!!!! So will be interesting to see what I report back on what we did...and if that sub lives up to my memory!

Morning project

So riddle me this....normally during the week I go to bed at 9:30 and struggle to drag myself out of bed at like 7:15. Even on the weekends if Dustin and I are just home watching a movie, it's rare I'll make it past 11pm. So now that he's out of town, I was up wide awake until 1:30 last night just cleaning and watching tv! And then wake up at 6:30 this morning ready to go and out of bed at 7! I really think Dustin just sleeps a lot and it must have some effect that transfers onto me. So this morning I took a break from some cleaning to work on a project...but didn't turn out 100%. So I had picked up these cheap frames at Michaels for only $7 and had this idea of instead of putting a picture in one of the large ones, to do something with words. So I just created a document in MS Word that had all the lines of our vows from the wedding. Unfortunately I then printed it on paper that I THOUGHT was the size of the opening in the frame....but was wrong. So for the time being I just improvised by added some black cardstock behind the document, so works for now and until I make the time and effort to print on the right size. I'm starting to feel like our place looks like a marriage shrine to us though! But I guess until we have kids, we don't have many other good things to frame. And I have so many frames from the wedding that I gotta fill them with pics of us!


I did this a while ago, but I also filled 4 of my frames with 8x10s of wedding pics and posted down our hallway. I used MPIX to print the photos and was really pleased with how they turned out. For the colored photos I chose a metallic-type finish and it's pretty cool.

Gus Maids

Man, so I swear our place gets way dustier than anywhere else I've lived. Maybe it's cause I married Dusty.....hahahaha! We have been in the process of doing some major cleaning- like pulling all the furniture out and cleaning behind it, wiping down the baseboards and walls, etc. Somehow Dustin is immune to seeing any dirt or realizing that things need cleaned, but I think when we did some of this deep cleaning he realized the filth we live in. The windows were absolutely disgusting that it was amazing we could see out of them! We picked up the living room rug and rotated it cause was getting worn in the same places....and in doing that realized that where we leave the curtains open, the sun has lightened the floor....so we have no choice but to continue using this rug in the exact same spot now! Dustin is now out of town on a golfing trip, so I'm trying to finish up the cleaning and have it looking like model home by the time he gets back! So the living room already looked pretty good, so just had a few general things to do in here. I got the kitchen and desk all cleaned up and all papers filed away last night. Tonight I completed cleaning both of the bathrooms. So now I just have left the bedroom and the dining area for tomorrow....2 of the rooms that should be the easiest, but unfortunately are the messiest cause is where i've dumped all the crap from cleaning everywhere else! And our closets are a mess...all stemming from there is just no place to go with our stuff. My goal once I get this all cleaned is to get a cleaning service to come asap and give me an estimate to do this....we keep saying we are going to hire someone, but then never follow through. Just to show the amount of dirt coming off our floors and rugs.....check this out! And I just normallly cleaned the floors less than a month ago!