Happy Thanksgiving

After making multiple trips back to the Midwest for Labor Day and our wedding, we decided to pass on heading back for Thanksgiving.  While we would have liked to have been with family, with another trip for Christmas, driving halfway across the country four times in four months seemed a bit much.  

Despite not going home,  we decided to grab Thanksgiving by the horns. Wednesday afternoon we headed up to New York City.  We were a bit nervous about traveling from DC to NYC the day before Thanksgiving and decided to take a bus. Initially our anxiety was justified. It took 30 minutes to get out of DC and 2 1/2 hours to get to Baltimore, which is normally only 40 miles from DC. Once we were north of Baltimore, traffic thinned out and we arrived in NYC in 6 1/2 hours (it was scheduled to take 4 hours). We were dropped off at Penn station, and took off into the bustling metropolis. 

We stopped by Macy's to check out the preparations for the parade and all of the holiday decorations.

We continued on to Grand Central Station to track down a slice of Junior's cheesecake.

(There was barely time to get a picture before this cheesecake disappeared.)

We were so focused on getting dessert, we forget we needed to pick up some dinner. We  found a few slices of pizza around the corner from our hotel. We stayed at the Helmsley Hotel across the street from our favorite building in NYC, the Chrysler building.

(Live from New York, it is Wednesday night!)

We woke up and headed to the parade before 6am and quickly realized we were late for the 9am parade!

(Not too many people on the street at 6am)

The parade route was already getting pretty crowded, some areas filled with people 5 deep. We started at 50th street in Times Square and headed north toward the beginning of the route. Considering we had both spent almost 9 hours in Times Square on New Year's Eve in 2009-2010, we unanimously decided to get as far from there as possible. We walked to Columbus circle, our ideal location, and found large crowds on small sidewalks. Somewhat bummed, we decided to continue walking up the parade route on Central Park West. We saw an area that had a few people in it, but was mostly empty. We attempted several times to get to this area only to be redirected or told the area was closed. On our last attempt, the police officer that told us we needed to turn around, became distracted by a family asking questions, so we took the opportunity to continue towards our targeted viewing area outside the Trump Tower. Come to find out, this area was reserved for Macy's Parade guests that possibly required credentials to enter. Either way, we had a front row seat of the parade and enjoyed over 2 1/2 hrs of giant balloons, floats and celebrities of varying levels of fame, most of whom we had never heard of.

(Waiting for the parade to start left very little to do.)

(Once the parade started, people got pretty excited.)

(Some people got a little too excited. "Don't taze me bro!")

(There were a lot of people out marching to the beat of different drummers.)

(It is amazing some of these people are still on Sesame Street.) 

 (Figure skating star Johnny Weir had extra confetti to share.)

(Check out the confetti whirlwind.)

(This float was nuts.) 

After the parade we jumped on the Subway and headed to Katz's Deli for Thanksgiving dinner. Our corned beef and Reuben sandwiches hit the spot.

This is Kelly's favorite place to eat in NYC largely because of her passion for a good Reuben, but also because it was featured in her favorite movie "When Harry Met Sally".

We walked over to the Soho neighborhood to track down Ben's mom's old apartment from 1964.

Next up we headed to Zuccotti Park to show our support for the 99% and Occupy Wall Street.

It was quite the scene, full of hardcore protesters, holdouts from the Vietnam era protesters, casual supporters (like us) and a large amount of media.

 We made the rounds, and were very impressed with the turnout on Thanksgiving.

(Hopefully less than 1% think it is a good idea to wear a cape in public.)

 

(This dog may be part of the 1%) 

The park was full of people and that was a ton of donated food for people to have a Thanksgiving meal. Kelly enjoyed a piece of pecan pie before we headed to battery park.

From Zuccotti Park we headed over to check out the stock exchange building itself.  The market was closed for Thanksgiving, however, someone was still making money by renting out space on the front of the building to advertise for TJ Maxx.

We had toyed with taking a tour of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island before we were deterred by the large lines. Instead we headed over to Stone St.

A friend had recommended the area because of its uniqueness and it being off the normal tourists radar. It is lined with old historic buildings with really narrow cobblestone streets. We stopped in Beckett's for a beverage and to rest for a few minutes.  Next, we headed to the Brooklyn Bridge. We took off on the pedestrian bridge, which is in the middle of the bridge, and power walked toward the middle in order to catch sunset.

It was a beautiful sunset over Manhattan and provided a great picture opportunity, which Ben took full advantage of.

We continued our walk over the bridge into Brooklyn. The bridge not only went over the East River, but about 1/2 mile into Brooklyn. In search of Grimaldi's pizza, we got extremely lost (of course this was when Kelly's phone died) only to find the restaurant was closed for Thanksgiving (despite what they had said on the phone - jerks). We walked down to the waterfront and enjoyed a stunning view of Manhattan.

We grabbed a cab back into the city near our bus station in Chinatown. Looking for a place to eat, we decided Chinatown was not going to provide many options for us, so we walked 5 blocks to Little Italy. We were pleasantly surprised to find several quaint streets decorated for Christmas. While we were looking for dinner, Kelly became memorized by an outside cannoli stand. If you remember from previous posts, Kelly is fan of the cannoli at Eastern Market in DC, so she was excited to get to try the real deal in Little Italy. We found a nice restaurant for dinner and enjoyed a extra large cannoli for dessert.

After dinner, it was time to head back to the Chinatown bus station to grab our bus back to DC. What happened next is hard to describe in words. Ben characterized as a "third world" experience.  Every time a bus would pull up, a large mass of people, primarily non-English speaking Asians would run towards the door and push their way through the door. We watched this happen several times before it was our turn. There was no way to know where the bus was headed so you just had to run towards it and try to get on and ask questions once you were on the bus. We also weren't sure why people were not just boarding in an orderly fashion since everybody had a ticket for the 7:30pm bus to DC.

Once again, we figured we would ask questions once we found a seat. After a few minutes of pushing and shoving and Ben throwing a few elbows, we snagged two of the last few seats left. Unfortunately, about twenty people were not so lucky. As it turned out, people that didn't get a seat had to wait for the next bus a couple of hours later with no guarantee of getting a seat on that bus either. We couldn't figure out what was going on, but decided that we didn't want to know. After finding a English speaking passenger, we were able confirm the bus was going to DC. While the quality of the bus was below even our standards, the driver decided to disregard the speed limits and other various traffic laws, to get us back in under 4 hours. After a quick cab ride, we were home.  And we were thankful for that.

Cowboys & Indians

The work week was pretty quiet this week.  We watched our normal TV shows and just caught up from a pretty big weekend.  We did a fair amount of laying around and just taking it easy.

(Mo made sure to take it extra easy this week)

(This is actually Dexter taking it easy)

Ben has been taking the bus both ways as he recovers from a flag football injury that makes running seem like a bad idea.  This has given him extra time to reflect on the shortcomings of the DC bus system.  It has also given him extra time to read, which is nice.

On Friday and Saturday, we kept up our theme of taking it easy for the week.  We also knocked out a variety of life chores and did some cooking.  With several hours of golf scheduled for the television, Ben decided to run to the store by himself.  While he was gone, Kelly made a couple loaves of bread and a delicious batch of pretzels.  A new addition to our kitchen experience was a Mac & Cheese casserole that was later coupled with left over chili for homemade chili mac.

(Move over Velveeta)

Well rested, we were ready to take Sunday by storm.  The Cowboys were in town, so we decided this historic rivalry would be a good time to see our first Redskins game.

(All of my culturally sensitive, but still rowdy friends are coming over tonight!)

Unfortunately, we are not season ticket holders and no one decided to give us tickets to the game. Fortunately, Ben enjoys haggling with ticket brokers (or scalpers, but we are not sure if Redskins fans are ok with that term).  Kelly enjoys reaping the benefits of this process, but has not fully developed the patience it sometimes takes.

(In DC Sunday is not the day to be PC)

Anyway, years of wondering around 3rd world markets has allowed Ben to eventually break the will of most ticket brokers.  Sometimes it doesn't work out (2011 NCAA Football National Championship/Opening Ceremony at the 2010 Winter Olympics), but most of the time it does (pretty much every other event we have been to).  The Redskins game was going to be a little tricky.  Making tickets harder to get was the fact that this is a rivalry game.  However, the Redskins are bad this year and Fed Ex Field has the largest capacity in the NFL - so we had that going for us.

After Ben and Kelly walked around the stadium to check out the general range of ticket prices, Ben began making outrageously low offers to a variety of people and often left them feeling insulted.  As game time drew closer, they began to be more willing to talk, but still somewhat determined to make some money.  At this point, Kelly came into the picture for a good cop/bad cop routine that conveyed 'she is really the one who controls the money' and 'that stills seems a little high.'  Eventually, after earning a somewhat questionable reputation, Ben got someone to cave.  We ended up with great seats for 35% of face value and under our budgeted goal.  With tickets in hand, we were off to see the game!

(Those are the smiles of victory in our pursuit of reasonably priced tickets)

Once we settled into our seats, we got to watch a great game.  The Cowboys jumped out to an early lead.

(We came for the football game, but stayed for the 'gun show' - Thank you Ed Hochuli)

But the Redskins played very well and came back.  We went through a few lead changes and ended up in overtime.

The Redskins won the coin toss for overtime and drove the ball down the field.  They had a chance for the win, but their kicker just missed the field goal wide right. 

The Cowboys took over and managed to get into field goal position and their kicker brought home the win.

 

After the game we and several thousand others made the trek to the Metro.  Back at home, we had dinner and called it a weekend.  We are looking forward to the short work week and lots of potential blog material from the Thanksgiving break.  Stay tuned and have a happy Thanksgiving!