Our last few trips to Manhattan - week of August 27th

My (Charlie's) parents came in town as Brady was a little bit older - 3 weeks by this time :).  He isn't sleeping through the night yet, but he was starting to sleep 4 or 5 hours, so getting out to do things was a little bit easier than it was in the first week or so.  So Katie and I got to have separate side trips to Manhattan while Mom and Dad were here.

On Tuesday, Dad and I went down for a brief trip to grab lunch at Carnegie Deli.  Katie and I went there for lunch during our first Thanksgiving in New Jersey, after going to the Macy's Parade. Dad and I had also been there a few years before on a trip to New York.  Carnegie Deli is famous for having huge Deli Sandwiches:

That's just one sandwich!  Basically, we probably should have just split one sandwich (though we made the same mistake the first trip).  Dad got pastrami, while I got corned beef.  We each ate half, and brought the rest home for a future meal.  We also walked through Times Square on the way back and stopped by Junior's, which is a famous New York cheesecake restaurant.  I got a full cheesecake to go so we could have some dessert later in the week.

We also stopped by the Empire State Building (before lunch) and went to the top there, which was something my Dad hadn't done yet.

Maybe more importantly, Katie and Leslie got the chance to get out of the house.  This was really Katie's first chance to do something away from the baby since Brayden was born.  So as scary as it may have been leaving Dad and Grandpa in charge! (we did fine)  The 2 ladies did lunch and a play in Manhattan.  Lunch was at Ruby Foo's, an asian cuisine restaurant that we'd had a year or so earlier.  The show was a new Matthew Broderick musical called "Nice Work if You Can Get It", a musical comedy based in the prohibition era.  Katie is still recuperating a bit - so she was tired after a fairly full day away.  But it was good for her to get down to the city and have a day of fun!

Brooklyn Bridge

After our 4th of July day off, I (Charlie) had the next two days off of work.  I took one of the days to go do something we'd talked about doing, but never ended up getting around to - walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm on a "diet / exercise" routine, so I figured I could go down to the city, walk all over kingdom come, and get to cheat a little bit on that diet part.

I started off with a late lunch at Katz's deli, which is down on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  I'd been to the famous deli when my sister Abby came to town last year, and thoroughly enjoyed the super-size deli sandwich you get there.

This time I put aside the pastrami I got last time and tried what Abby had on the previous visit - the corned beef.  I must say - Katz has good pastrami, but their corned beef is the best I've ever had.  I polished off three-fourths of the sandwich, so I had a bunch of walking to do!

It was a mile to the bridge, so I walked there.  The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest standing suspension bridges in the country, and is now a National Historic Landmark.  The bridge is one of 3 that connect Brookly to Manhattan, the others being the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges).  There's a roadway and a walkway, and over 4,000 people walk across the bridge each day.  Considering the nice (but very hot) weather and the fact it was one day after a holiday, I bet there was a bunch more the Thursday I went.  From start to finish, it's 2 miles across, though the bridge itself is only 1 mile.  The picture below is of the Manhattan Bridge.

Afterward, I went to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, which is a huge park built by the same guys who built Central Park in Manhattan.  It's pretty amazing to see this massive park area in the middle of the biggest city in America, and Prospect Park seems a bit more secluded from the rest of the city.

I spent a couple of hours walking around the Park, and then when I was sufficiently tired, walked a bit further to Junior's - the famous cheesecake place - to cheat a bit more on my diet.  After what I'm pretty sure was over 10 miles of walking, that was perfectly OK!

A visit from London and a Hall of Fame basketball player

On Tuesday June 19th, Katie's good friend and college roommate, Shannon, was in town visiting from London.  She lived in Chicago right after college and then moved to London a couple of years ago, so we don't get to see her as much as we use to and we jumped at the chance to see here while she was in NYC.  We met her for dinner at place called Clyde Frazier's Wine and Dine near Penn Station at 10th and 37th Ave.  Clyde Frazier played basketball for the Knicks back in the 1970's and now he is an announcer for the Knicks.  They always play advertisements for his restaurant on TV during the Knicks games, so we thought it would be a good spot to meet Shannon.
It was great catching up with Shannon especially since we had not seen her since Katie has been pregnant.
The food was really good and the restaurant had a nice posh yet sportsy vibe to it and to top it all off, Clyde the man himself was there.  The NBA finals were on TV that night, so he seemed to be enjoying himself by the bar watching the game and greeting fans.  So of course, we had to go get a picture with him.  He was very nice and didn't seem bothered at all with people taking pictures with him.  

Reds vs. Yankees

This week the Reds were in New York, playing the Mets on Wednesday and Thursday and then playing the Yankees in a rare interleague matchup at Yankee Stadium.  In fact, this was the first time the Reds had played at the NEW Yankee Stadium, which opened up in 2009 after the original had stood for 85 years.

Yankee Stadium retained a lot of the old look - most notably the white facade across the top.

But while the new one is a sight to behold, the old one had all the history and just seemed better!  The seats and views are pretty neat.  We had left field seats, second row.  We got to see a good pitching matchup - Bronson Arroyo (warming up below) for the Reds...

...against Andy Pettitte, who was back for his third stint with the Yankees.  This was only his second start after a year in retirement.

Arroyo pitched really well, and had given up only 1 run through 7 innings.  Unfortunately, Pettitte was even better, and the Reds never scored a run off the Yankees - it was the first shutout of the Reds this year.  The Yankees got to Arroyo for 3 runs in the 8th inning, so the final score was 4-0.

It wasn't all bad - we did get to enjoy some of the fine (but expensive) fare at the game.  Charlie had the famous beef and gravy sandwich from Lobel's - which is a New York City butcher that has a stand at Yankee Stadium.  He also had a Nathan's Famous Hot Dog later in the night (not really in line with his counting calories - but oh well!).  Katie had barbecue from a stand that had "Brother Jimmy's", which is also some NYC local eats.  We also found a "retro" beer stand that left Charlie a little disappointed - Pabst Blue Ribbon and Rolling Rock aren't exactly old-school brews in our mind.  There was an ale called Ballantine, which used to be the best selling American beer before Budweiser - so Charlie tried that.

We must have been bad luck - the Reds lost when we went, but they won the next 2 games to take the series over the much-richer Yankees!  All in all, it was still fun though to see our team in Yankee Stadium!

Visit from Charlie's Parents

The weekend of January 28th, Charlie's parents Leslie and Tom came to visit us.  They flew into Newark on Thursday afternoon and Charlie picked them up from the airport.   After settling in, the four of us went to dinner at a new (well new to us) Italian place in nearby Allendale called Meza Luna.  We all enjoyed our meals and came back to our house to play the card game Wizard.  On Friday, Tom and Leslie relaxed at our house with Griffey while Katie had to work the whole day and Charlie worked a half day. He came home for lunch and brought his parents to our favorite bagel shop in Ramsey-Goldberg's Bagels.  Friday evening we had made reservations at a restaurant called Half Moon in Dobbs Ferry, New York which is about 20 miles north of Manhattan.  Coming from our place we took the Tappan Zee Bridge and through the historic Hudson Valley of New York.  In distance, we could see the Manhattan skyline and restaurant had a great patio on the river unfortunately it was too cold to use it.  We tried the duck nachos for an appetizer which was really good and had a steaks for dinner.

On Saturday,  we went into the city for lunch and to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  For lunch, we chose a really cute French restaurant called Orsay on the Upper East Side.  The restaurant was delicious and only a few blocks from the Museum.

After lunch, we walked over to the Museum, which is enormous....good thing we wore comfortable shoes.  There was so much to see, so we tried to get a sampling of as much as we could.  The two must sees was the baseball card exhibit (for Charlie...I think this was the only reason he came to an art museum) and the Fabrege collection (for Leslie).   The baseball card exhibit was on a short wall and comes from a collection that was donated from Jefferson Burdick who had over 30,000 baseball cards and the Museum rotates the cards into a much more managable exhibit.  During January, there were 50 cards showcased for the "Breaking the Color Barrier in Major League Baseball" theme.   The Fabrege was also a small exhibit but Leslie really enjoyed it.  Fabrege comes from a Russian jeweler who made very intricate jewelry and most famously the intricate Fabrege eggs that were made for Russian royalty in the early 1900's.  Some other interesting exhibits we saw included the Arms and Armor exhibit, the Revolutionary War artwork and the classic European masters such as Degas, Monet and Picasso.

After wearing ourselves out all over the museum, we walk by Central Park and then took the train from Penn Station back to Ramsey.  We all went to get pizza at our favorite pizza place - Kinchley's.

Sunday we all relaxed around the house - and again got some food from Goldberg's.  Tom and Leslie helped us take down our Christmas tree and decorations.  It was a great weekend spending time with Tom and Leslie!.

Holiday Season in New York City

Before heading back home to Ohio for Christmas, we spent some time in New York City.  Originally, we had planned to be home the week before Christmas, but Charlie's work changed to make mandatory vacation time the week after - so we switched up to come to Ohio the week between Christmas and New Year's.  On Saturday the 17th, we went down to do some final Christmas shopping and see the city.

We started off going to Croxley's Ale House down on 3rd Street and Avenue B.  Croxley's is a little bit further south in Manhattan from where we are used to.  But they had a 20-cent wing deal and a huge beer selection that Charlie wanted to try out.  He got the "Black and Blue" - which was a combination of Guinness and his favorite New York area beer, Bluepoint Blueberry Ale.

After lunch, we were on to the main point of going to Manhattan - shopping.  We went to Grand Central Station for the Holiday Fair in Vanderbilt Hall.  The Fair had many shops set up from local New York businesses.  We got quite a few of our presents for our family from here - and Charlie got Katie's present, a winter painting of our next stop - the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center.

The tree is an annual tradition in New York City going back "officially" to 1933 (unofficially to 1931) - that has, of course, become more and more grand today.  Every year, the Gardens Divisions searches long and far for a huge tree - up to 100 feet tall.  Once selected, the tree is brought in by a trailer to be put up in the center of Manhattan in mid-November.  The tree is then lit toward the end of November, and left up until January 6th.  There is ice skating and a generally enormous crowd surrounding the tree every Christmas season.

We also saw the Saks Fifth Avenue Lights display nearby on 5th Avenue, and Rudolph took some time out of his busy schedule to get a picture with Katie.

We went back to Manhattan on Wednesday night that week for some more New York City Christmas spirit.  We got tickets to the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, headlined by the Rockettes.  This is also a Christmas tradition since 1933.  It was a great show and we were glad we got a chance to see it this holiday season!

Thanksgiving 2011 - a visit from Katie's parents

For the second year in a row, we did Thanksgiving in Ramsey, NJ.  Unlike last year, we didn't do the Macy's Parade (though we did watch it on TV) and we didn't go to an NFL game (though we also watched plenty of that on TV).  Katie's parents came up to Jersey and we spent Thanksgiving with them.  They drove up on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and spent the week and the next weekend with us.  Griffey sure liked this, as it meant he spent hardly any time in the cage this week!  Katie's mom, Sue took him on at least a walk a day - and he got to spend some good "couch time" with Katie's dad, Bob.

Katie had to work some pretty late nights Monday thru Wednesday because her department was in the middle of preparing the 2nd quarter financial statements for Toys-R-Us.  Good thing for Griffey that he had the Grandparents to look after him.  Thursday, Katie and her mom got up and started cooking all the fixings while Bob and Charlie relaxed on the couch.  They did their part by carving the turkey.   Thursday was basically just spent relaxing and eating and watching football....but isn't that what Thanksgiving is all about anyways?  We watched the Macy's Parade on TV and was delighted to see the Miami University in the parade just before Santa Clause ended the show.

Friday, we had tickets for "Million Dollar Quartet" a play that used to be on broadway but moved off-broadway.  We first ate brunch at a local diner and then took the train from Ramsey into the City.  The play is about one night where Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash get together for a legendary jam session at Sun Records.  It was amazing show....we all loved it.  Afterwords, we walked thru Times Square.

Once we got back to Ramsey, we took Katie's parents to our favorite pizza place - Kinchley's.

Saturday, was the long awaited (over 2,900 days since a Michigan win for Charlie) Ohio State vs. Michigan game.  We made some skyline chili 3-ways for lunch and Charlie was jumping up and down when Michigan pulled off the win over the buckeyes the first time in 9 years.  Charlie had actually attended the last Michigan win - Ann Arbor in 2003.

Saturday evening, we took Katie's parent's to one of our favorite local restaurants called the The Village Grill.  They have really good food and on Saturday night they usually have entertainment.  We were lucky enough to have Katie's parents on the weekend that Lonnie Youngblood was playing there.   We knew Katie's parents would love him.  He is an old soulful singer who sings a lot of Frank Sinatra and songs from the 60's.  Charlie and I discovered him on our date to The Village Grill last Valentine's Day where  we closed down the bar and absolutely loved him.   It was a really fun evening with Katie's parents.

Sunday, Katie's parents helped us put up our Christmas tree and decorations and spent the day relaxing, which it was really nice to have the help.

It was a great week having Bob and Sue stay with us and Griffey really enjoyed having them too!