I wanna' be a part of it... New York, New York!

So Ben and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary back on December 29th.  Our gift to each other was.... a newborn! So we decided to wait for the summer and really do it up big with a trip to NYC.  My parents were kind enough to keep the babies for us while we traveled. 

We left the kids on Monday and drove up to Chicago for the day, since our flight was leaving from O'hare early the next morning.  We stopped at an outlet mall and also went to another Triple D spot called The Shanty.  As always, Guy Fieri hardly disappoints.



Then we went on to our hotel, which was this really fancy Hyatt.  Since we did the Park, Sleep, Fly program, it only cost us $100 and we got to stay in 4 star quality- totally recommend that (thank you for the tip, Mom!)  After relaxing for a bit we decided we should hit up some Chicago deep dish pizza at Gino's. Good stuff...

Yes, I know there are a lot of eating pictures, but other than walk around and sight see- that's pretty much what we did on this vacation :) So anyway, that night about 2 am we got a call that our flight had been cancelled... boo... but through a sort of crazy couple of rather amazing-race like phone calls, talking with agents, etc.  we were able to re-book and get on a flight that arrived only an hour later so it all worked out.  When we arrived in NYC, Ben immediately got us hooked up with a scary limo driver that took us into the city.  Looking back, he totally could have murdered us, but it was fun riding in a limo and he did manage to get us quickly and safely to our hotel, the Hampton Inn in Times Square, off of 39th street- Garment District.  We wasted no time and set off to Chinatown.

Joe's Shaghai dumplings were the best!! We had fun looking at all of the knock-off stuff in Chinatown, and also browsed through Little Italy which is a pretty tiny street now.  We had a lot planned for the day, so we hopped on the subway and ventured down to the Financial district where we checked out Wall street, Tiffany's, NYSE, Federal Hall, and took in the city scape.



Then we headed over to the WTC memorial. All I have to say is that actually being there, at the site of that monumental day in history is just overwhelming.  No words, really to describe it.

We then made out way further south to the seaport and Pier 17.  There are so many beautiful sights to take in in NYC, and this area was by far my favorite.  We wandered around a little bit and decided to make the trek over the Brooklyn Bridge. For me, this was the most fun and memorable part of our trip.  It was breathakingly awesome!!

When we reached Brooklyn, we took the subway back over to Chelsea area and shared dinner at Katz' Deli, which is where they filmed "that" scene from When Harry Met Sally. Of course we split a sandwich so we could save room for delicious dessert(s) at Clinton St. Bakery- ohmygoodness!! Not to be missed! I would have gone back there if we had had more time.  We had many more adventures in store for Day 2 in the Big Apple, so as soon as our head hit the pillows we totally crashed :) It was a long and full day.