Bob had the great idea for us to all spend a few days in New York around Christmas. The kids were excited about the idea, so we booked it about a month ago. We left Thursday the 15th after school; they had to miss a half day of school on Friday, which was a fun party day and Christmas dress down day, but they were still ok with missing. We flew out of RDU on a 5pm flight to LaGuardia which had no issues other than some weather-related bumps. We got sandwiches and wraps to take on the flight for dinner. We admired the "new" LaGuardia terminal on our way to the free shuttle bus to the subway, which we rode to near our hotel.
We stayed at the INNSiDE at New York Nomad in Chelsea, which is the area that Bob usually stays when he goes for work since that's where the Google office is located. By the time we got to our rooms, it was almost 8pm, so we just unpacked and settled in. It should be noted that this was the first time that we have gotten 2 hotel rooms. This hotel was a good deal, but only had 1 queen bed per room. Rather than bringing 2 air mattresses, we opted for separate rooms. We ended up with rooms across the hall from each other, which worked out great because the kids then got the quiet side of the building while we had the street side. It was also good that we got the two rooms because they were rather small and it would have been tight to get 2 air mattresses and 2 more bags into a room!
We slept great and headed out on foot to the nearest Brooklyn Bagel and Coffee Co. It was crowded and we felt like locals there! The parents got bacon, egg, and cheese bagels, Anna got a bacon and butter bagel, and Erin got a plain bagel. Everyone except Erin was a big fan!
It was raining this morning, and the rain continued all day into the evening, so we considered our list and decided to go visit the Google offices first since it was nearby and we could stay indoors. We had a quick walk (each hotel room had an umbrella, plus Erin brought one, so we were pretty well equipped for the rain) to one of the buildings and got ourselves checked in. Bob gave us a great tour for a couple of hours, showing us where he sits when he's there, his coworkers' desks, and all of the Google fun items like scooters, Lego room, game room, microkitchens, cafes, artwork, special seating, soundproof pods, meeting rooms, etc. We really enjoyed the tour!
From there, we went to the next building over (Google inhabits 3 buildings in a row) and looked around the first floor Chelsea Market for a little while, then went upstairs and had (free) lunch at a Google cafe. It was really good, though a little too healthy for some of us (Anna).
After a short tour of that building, we hopped on the subway back to the Rockefeller Center area and saw the tree and a few brave ice skaters in the rain. Since it was still raining, we decided to check out some of the famous stores in the area (Lululemon, Nike, and Nintendo, to name a few). The girls had a blast with that!
After some shopping, we went to the highly-rated NY Pizza Suprema for dinner and had a super yummy pizza dinner. We each got 2 slices, and they were huge! All of the types we got were really good. We then walked over to Macy's and admired the store from the outside as well as from the inside. The kids got some souvenirs there. We also went into Forever 21 (not a New York icon, but Anna wanted to see it). Then it was back to the hotel via subway for the night.
After the bagel issue on Friday, we opted for Dunkin' Donuts near our hotel for breakfast on Saturday instead. It was a hit all around. We discussed our priorities of what we wanted to see that day, which ranged from ballet to a show to ice skating to a museum to more shopping. We knew it would be tough to do all of those, so we first tackled ice skating. I had not booked any skating tickets ahead of time, so the Rockefeller Center, Central Park, and Bryant Park were all booked. It was probably good that I hadn't booked them for Friday with the bad weather. So, we took the subway over to Bryant Park anyway in hopes that there would be walk-up tickets (there weren't), but we checked out the rink and walked around the really cute holiday market there.
From there, we found an ice skating option in Brooklyn and decided to go for that. It was about a 35 minute subway ride each way. We hopped off at Prospect Park and had a nice walk through the south end of the park to get to the ice rink. We got our skates and just made our 11:00am skate time. Erin gave skating a good try, but decided that it was not for her and watched us for the second half of the 90 minutes. Anna had recently been ice skating with friends in Cary and was pretty good. Bob was the most skilled skater of all of us with his backwards skating!
So, we skated for awhile and then got lunch at the cafe at the park. We then rode the subway back to Manhattan.
Upon arriving back, we decided that we wanted to try to get last-minute show tickets at the TKTS booth that we had used in the summer of 2018 when we had that unexpected 2-day layover in the city. Erin and I stood in the line (which looked very long but was really not that bad). Bob and Anna checked out the M&M, Hershey, and Krispy Kreme stores nearby and brought us some snacks in line. We were able to score tickets to the Rockettes at 4pm that day, which was our first choice! Yay! We decided to ride the subway and drop stuff back off at our hotel and have a short rest, but it ended up being a very short rest once we realized how early we needed to be to Radio City Music Hall. So, it was back on the subway (we tried a bus, but it didn't show up) for a short time. We got to RCMH, got in, and found our seats just in time. This place is huge and is super pretty inside. We loved the chandeliers! The seats were great - in the first (of 3) mezzanines, in the middle section, on the aisle. AND - they were way less than half the price of buying tickets ahead!
We enjoyed the show very much - there were some fun effects, awesome music, and great dancing! It ended around 5:30pm and we entered the super crowded and crazy area outside.
For many blocks, it was just people everywhere and we vertically challenged people couldn't see anything. After trying to find another dinner option, we gave up and got Chipotle, which was not too crowded and was yummy. From there, we walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral and saw it by night. It was very pretty and also crowded, even at 7pm on a Saturday. We enjoyed seeing the Christmas decorations and nativity.
After that, we walked over to Grand Central Station and admired the red and green lights inside of it, and then rode the short S train to another subway to our hotel.
Sunday morning, we got up and repeated the Dunkin breakfast, then walked a short way to St. John the Baptist church. It was a beautiful church! Sadly, there was probably fewer than 30-40 people in there for the 9:30am mass. We enjoyed it, though.
We then walked back to the hotel, listening to the World Cup final game. We packed up our stuff, checked out of the hotel, and made our way back to LaGuardia via subway and bus. We got lunch in the terminal and enjoyed the fancy new fountain there, complete with Christmas-themed shows every 15 minutes. We saw the end of the soccer game (Argentina won it in penalty kicks), then sat at our gate for awhile. We got on the plane as scheduled, but after getting almost to the runway, they discovered a mechanical issue, so we had to turn around for repairs. The whole delay ended up being almost an hour, so we called neighbor friend Kellie in as our backup to pick Finley up from the Pooch Pad. Once we got going, all went well the rest of the way.
So, it was a really fun trip! All of our pictures can be found HERE. We loved seeing all of the awesome Christmas decorations around the city. They really go all out. We had some delicious food, did some really fun things, and just generally enjoyed seeing it all!
