Wicked Fun!

I'm still glowing from my weekend in NYC with my good friend, Carol... one night and two days with nothing to do but have girly fun! With our husbands at the helm and not at all daunted by the prospect of a whole weekend alone with the kids :-), we set off for our much anticipated adventure. We took the bus in on Saturday morning - so convenient as the bus station (at the train station) is only a couple of miles from our house. The trip in went so quickly - we spent much of time on our phones searching for cool brunch spots. Even though we were both severely coffee deprived, we decided to wait till we got to the restaurant to have any, which was a good call since it didn't take too long to get there. Mind you, if you ever want to go to NYC, choose as your travel companion someone who lived in the city for ten years!! Man, Carol is a walking map and city guide!! She was amazing. :-) So, we got to our chosen brunch spot, a fabulous restaurant called Balthazar, a French bistro so perfectly perfect in every way -- a 20 foot high tin ceiling, huge antique mirrors, monsterous bouquets of flowers, an entire wall of wine bottles, smiling, gracious, efficient waiters who refill your coffee at every perfect moment, glittery, sophisticated people at nearby tables, chatting happily in different languages, stupidly expensive eggs benedict (of course!), and a bathroom with a cheerful attendant and a strange assortment of lotions, perfumes, and the like. A perfect start to our weekend.
Completely sated, we headed out into the crisp day and decided that we'd like to spend loads of time just wandering aimlessly in and out of shops, something we so rarely get to do. Our kids were never far from our minds, and right away we had to stop at a street vendor's table and browse his wares -- a zillion different hand-knitted finger puppets, all so cute. We each chose a great assortment to bring home to the kids - mine were a penguin, camel, pig with a vest on, monkey in green overalls. giraffe, and a yellow spotted one that could be an alligator or a dinosaur, not sure exactly. We headed towards 5th Avenue for shopping, although the majority of our purchases were at fancy chocolate shops... we kind of created our own "chocolate tour." Our highest recommendation goes to Michel Cluizel's - just stunningly delicious.
We were amazed again at how quickly the time flew by, and before we knew it we were headed for dinner at Nobu, a gorgeous Japanese restaurant whose sexy atmosphere didn't disappoint! We did struggle with the menu a bit, and our waiter didn't work too hard to help us out, but we enjoyed the sushi and tempura. After dinner we had to practically run about 9 blocks to the theater so we wouldn't be late for Wicked! If you're trying to choose which show to see in NYC, you can't go wrong with Wicked, especially if you've read the book first. It was fantastic, top marks all around. It was nearly 11pm when we got out of the theater, but we were still in high spirits when we walked a few blocks to Times Square (see last photo) and admired all the flashy lights before heading back to the hotel for a deep sleep until 8:30am, an unheard of hour for us! The hotel was only a block from Times Square, but it was surprisingly quiet at night.
We had a leisurely morning after our late wake-up, and made our way to Chinatown for dimsum, OF COURSE! Glorious. We had a few hours after that to continue our aimless wandering before our 3pm massage appointment at Bliss. We did push the limits of our girly getaway to the extreme, didn't we?! Thanks, Carol, for being my awesome friend and fantastic travel companion! I'm already looking forward to next time, and we might just have to bring some more friends with us!