NYC Trip-Day 1 (Tuesday)

Tuesday morning Leila's Auntie Jen came over to begin Leila's-fabulous-adventure-of-being-showered-with-attention-by-a-ton-of-people-who-she-loves-and-who-love-her :) Was she sad to see us go? Um. . .no! In fact, she had looked forward to this day with anticipation! We had talked to her for a week about how mommy and daddy were going to New York. We then told her that she would be going to my cousin's house, be taken care of by her Aunt and eventually make her way to Grandma's house where she would stay the last couple of days. After telling her the agenda a few times, she had it down. The conversation went something like this:

"Leila! Where are Mommy and Daddy going?"

"Nort!" (New York)

"Good! And where is Leila going?"

"Teah's house! . . .friends!. . .toys!. . .Grandma's house!"

Then she would randomly tell me throughout the week:

"Mommy go Nort!" (with a very sure-of-herself tone and nod of the head)

"Yep! Mommy's going to New York"

"Daddy go Nort tooooo!?!?!"

"Yep! Daddy's going to New York too!"

"But we'll come back and give you lots of hugs and kisses!!!"

*Disinterested stare*

Here's a sample of what that might look like. . .as if she's saying "mmm hmmm. OK Mom. Does the fun end at that point?"

When we left her with Jen, they came out onto the balcony to wave goodbye. As has been a ritual lately, I yelled up to her "who loves Leila?" to which she confidently replied "Mommy!"

Good! I hope she doesn't forget it :)

We then embarked on our journey, first driving to Nana and Pa's house so that Pa could drive us to the airport and we could leave our car behind. It was nice to start off our trip with hugs from those two!

It was business as usual, flying from Salt Lake to Denver, but then there was a storm warning in Denver and all sorts of airplanes were advised to land at other airports until the storm subsided. This increased our layover by two hours :( But hey! Why complain! I got to spend it with my best friend!

Originally we were planning on arriving at the first apartment at around 11:30pm, but the extended layover pushed that to about 1:30am. We let our host know and he was super nice about it.

We took a taxi out to Chelsea and met Stark! He didn't seem put out at all by our being late. In fact, we were surprised to find out that we weren't even keeping him up! He stayed up and watched a movie and went out on the town at 2am with his friend. He said he does that most nights--stays up until about 4 or 5, then sleeps in until noon. Oh, the exciting night life of a New Yorker!

Left: Robby is standing underneath the loft.
Right: A warm welcome from Stark after a long trip!

Here is our lovely loft bed!

Us and Stark! After spoiling us like he did, the other hosts had big shoes to fill!

Stark was SUPER accommodating! He showed us our room-- with a loft bed, and showed us the little goodies he had gotten for us--little shampoo and conditioner, a chocolate bar, a fruit bowl, a bowl of chips, and a refrigerator full of yummy juices! Free food!? Sold! My mindset is that if you want an extra star when I rate you (whether it be a restaurant, hotel, whatever) you offer me free food! I was one happy  pregnant lady! 

Anyway, we went to bed happy with how our trip had started and excited for the adventure to begin. And we were so tired that if there was any big city noise going on outside, we were too comatose to hear it!

NYC Trip (the intro)

Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamt of visiting New York City! I've always loved big cities, particularly city lights at night and tall sky scrapers. I think this dream was inspired by the many movies I watched as a kid that took place in NYC, or any big city for that matter. I could hardly wait to experience the excitement for myself--lights, broadway, food, crazy traffic, scary people, the whole lot! This May, my dream finally came true! My husband and I, along with my sister-in-law, Heather and her Husband Tanner, spent a week in the big apple!

One of the most exciting elements of our trip was our accommodations. Rather than paying for expensive hotels, we opted to find abodes through airbnb.com. This website allows people who have extra space to rent it out (whether it's one room in their house, an extra apartment, cabin, house boat, tree house, teepee, converted hippy bus etc. (really, those are all on there!) Last year we used this site to find a hostel in Thailand, where we each had our own single beds in a room where there were three additional beds with strangers sleeping in them. It was a great adventure!

This picture (forgive the blurriness) was taken at about 1AM when we arrived at our hostel in Bangkok, Thailand last year. We were shown to our shared room where a snoring stranger lay sleeping on one of the five beds. If you'll notice--there's a beer bottle sitting on his locker (sketchy)! . . .Actually he turned out to be really nice :)

This year, we used airbnb to find 4 different accommodations while we were in NYC. The first was in Chelsea, NY the second in Union City, NJ, the third in New Haven, CT, and the fourth was across the street from the South end of central park (no kidding)! So we stayed in 3 different states on our trip!

Finding sleeping accommodations this way was a fantastic idea for at least a few reasons--first, it allowed us to see how the locals lived, and even meet some of them. Secondly, it meant we had access to a full kitchen everywhere we stayed; and third, it was WAAAY cheaper than a hotel. To give you an idea, our best deal was at the apartment across the street from Central Park. The four of us had a one bedroom apartment plus a sofa bed in the front room for less than $200 night. The JW Marriott just a few doors down offers a similar sized space (1 bedroom plus a sofa bed in the front room) MINUS the kitchen for $899/night! Oh how I love good deals!

Above: This map shows a general idea of where we stayed in NY/NJ.

Below: On one of the days we rented a car and drove to New Haven, CT ( Robby's birthplace). We also stopped by Greenwich, CT (Heather's birthplace) on our way up there (more about that later).

 We got to do/see/eat so much that I think it would be best to break it down into separate blog posts for each day. . .although I admit that's a little optimistic of me--hopefully I'll make time to sit down and write that many blog posts before burning out. But the take-home message is that it was a fantastic trip! It was wonderful to spend so much time with the love of my life and to travel with Heather and Tanner who we don't see often enough!