And We're Back

Howdy... got back from our East Coast trip yesterday morning.  We had a nice, bright and early flight 6:30am flight out of lovely Newark Liberty Airport... so translated to, especially with latest "increased security," getting to the airport at around 4am local time, but that was still better than the red-eye flight out since we were at least able to get a few hours of some quality sleep before the 2,000+ mile flight.

We had a great time and pretty much did everything that was on our "list"... and with Todd spending some extended time with my parents and meeting my brother for the very first time, he had more than a few "light bulb moments" when it comes to explaining some of my quirks.

The trip was a succession of near misses.  We spent Tuesday morning thru midday Thursday in NYC.  We went to the Mets game at Shea on Tuesday night, and the Wednesday game ended up being rained out after 6 innings.  We narrowly escaped being in the middle of the blackout that crippled the subway system and the Upper East Side on Wednesday.  On Saturday, we went to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (from the NJ side), and managed to get up to the observation deck on Lady Liberty before a suspicious package caused an evacuation of the island.

The NYC portion of our trip were the two hottest days of our entire trip.  The weather folks threw out that familiar 3-H forecast... hazy, hot, and humid.   If you don't believe me, here are a couple of pictures from the Top of the Rock observation deck on Wednesday.

We did the major tourist thing and got a "Rock Pass" which included a tour of Radio City Music Hall, NBC Studios, and the trip up to the Top of the Rock Observation deck.  It seemed a little steep at $45/person, but each of those things individually were approximately $20/each so it was a bit of a deal. 

I was glad Todd got to see the inside of Radio City since I have fond memories of being wow-ed by the interior when I was a kid.   We also got to go below the stage to see the hydraulic lifts and toured some of the other non-public parts of the huge building.   The NBC Tour was fun as well, we visited the Conan O'Brien and Saturday Night Live sets.   On the NBC tour ticket it says it is "rare, but not impossible" to see a familiar face on the tour... but sure enough while we were sitting on the SNL set, NBC News Anchor Brian Williams comes walking across the set.  I'm guessing he was taking a short-cut as I am pretty sure he had a momentary "oh crap" look when he saw that there was a tour, but he as very nice and said hello to all of us.

We had a few other celebrity sightings.  On Tuesday, we were heading up towards Central Park and there was a outdoor concert going on by the CBS The Early Show and next to the Apple store.  As it ended up, it was Kelly Clarkson.  It was tough to get close (or get a good picture as you will see below), but we hung around to hear her sing her new hit "Never Again" and old favorite "Since You've Been Gone."  Early Show host Hannah Storm was also on hand singing along (offstage!) with Kelly. 

Before leaving on Thursday, we headed over to The Today Show where I made my national television debut.  My mom recorded the show and I made the briefest of appearances in the background.  We did get to see Meredith Viera with fill-in host David Gregory (NBC News' White House Correspondent)... unfortunately Matt, Ann, and Al were all away...

Finally, on the celebrity sightings... we did see Fantasia in The Color Purple and she was incredible... but I'll save that for another post.  Oh, and since we didn't get rained out... we also had our first sighting of Times Square's Naked Cowboy!

I won't overwhelm you with too much more here and now.  I am planning a whole post devoted to our successful Sopranos Tour of New Jersey.  We tracked down 5 major locations and a sprinkling of other sights you see in the opening montage... so that was quite fun. (Here's a link to that post)

Otherwise, I'll let you know when I post pix up on Flickr, it's probably easier on everyone to look at pix and reading little blurbs than being bored by reading blow-by-blow blog entries.  But here are a few quick pix to whet your appetite.