NYC Girlz Weekend – 2008

Brenda, Roxanne, & I decided about 6 yrs ago to take a girlz only trip once a year. What a great plan you say, ABSOLUTELY, we thought so anyway!!! This great plan lasted about 2 yrs. The first year we went to Providence, RI, and the second year we went to NYC. Both trips were a BLAST!!! We still laugh about the trips, and the fun we had, we will have those memories FOREVER!!

Of course we spent the next 4 yrs pregnant, 4 babies between the three of us puts a bit of damper on the girlz trips. So we decided that we would put our weekends on hold until we were done with the baby making process, or at least on a break. Well, this year, “We were on a break!” (Good Friends reference don’t ya think Rox!! J )

I think the 2008 trip planning began with Rox (I have to be sure to give credit to our “It’s all about me” girl!!) It was fleeting thought at first, sounded FABULOUS, but we didn’t really think we could pull it off. If I remember correctly, NYC came up because we had such a GREAT time last time, and I of course think it is the greatest city known to man on the planet!! Rox has since nicknamed it “CNYC”, Carrie’s New York City. I think this is a fabulous name!!! But with airfare being what it is these days, and hotel cost, we figured it was just a great plan that would never get off the ground. In comes Rox’s AWESOME boss that owns an apartment in NYC, and offered it up for us to crash. WOW, it seemed to be written in the stars that after 4 yrs, we were meant to take this trip, and it was meant to be taken in NYC…. YEAH says Carrie!!!! NYC, here I come!!!

We arrived in NYC on Friday afternoon, Brenda & I flew in around 2:30, and Rox took a bus from Maryland, and arrived about 20 mins after us. The apartment was on 107th & Broadway, (Yep, the “Upper Westside”). We were going to live like queens WITH a doorman that we decided would be forever named “Atticus Spartacus” (from Birdcage, played by Hank Azera). The fact that we had a doorman, and I thought that was the greatest part of the apartment brought on much laughter all on it’s own for most of the weekend!! The apartment was AWESOME!!! It was 2400 sq feet, and all of it was completely what you would expect a NYC apartment to look like. The view was great, and we were very excited to have such a great place to crash, but equally excited to get out, and hit the streets of CNYC!!

We had decided that we would head to Coney Island (Yep, my idea!!, and a rather FABULOUS one if I do say so myself!!) on Friday night. During our last trip 4 yrs ago, we never tried to subway, so we decided this was a good idea considering Coney Island was about 45 min away, and that would make for a very costly taxi ride. We were trying to go as cheap as you can in NYC for the weekend!! Rox had to take the subway from the bus stop to the apartment, so she had studied the subway map, and was feeling pretty comfortable with being able to get us to Coney Island for the evening. Coney Island is located in Brooklyn, so we jumped on the subway, and got comfortable for our 45 min trip.

We arrived in CI about 6:00, and the first place on the agenda was the have a hot dog at Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand. I got the idea to go to CI from watching “Diner’s, Drive-in’s, & Dive’s”, one of my favorite Food Network shows!! The first thing you see when you step out of the subway station is Nathan’s, it is sooo cool!!! Coney Island was PACKED with New Yorkers, I mean just PACKED!!! The line at Nathan’s was CRAZY!! But worth the experience, had a dog, and a beer, (well, B had a burger, a DOUBLE burger, and she ate the WHOLE thing!!! I was sooo impressed!!).

From there we walked up to the board walk, we had to stop for a pee break, our second one in about 20 mins, (we do that A LOT when Rox is with us, about every 20 mins or so… J ). Both pee breaks, I was standing outside the bathroom soaking in the sights, and the one thing I decided was that the people watching aspect of Coney Island was by far one of the most entertaining parts of the night, (well next to B getting poo pooed… J ) I made sure to tell the girls they really needed to pay attention to the people, they were just CRAZY and so very entertaining!!! We walked both sides of the boardwalk, soaked in the sights, took some great pictures, and had a ton of fun checking out the locals, or “Nathan” as we decided to call them. That was our code word for the weekend for any “interesting” people we saw. If one of us would see a person of interest, we would say “Nathan at 2:00”, so the other two would know where to look. It was a crack up, we saw so many “Nathan’s”, we could barely keep up with the sight seeing!

We had passed a bar on the way to the board walk that was called I think “Beer Beach”, it was very cool!! It was a sand bar with plastic tables & chairs. When we saw it, we decided we would hit it after the boardwalk to have a few beers, and watch more “Nathan’s”. Coney Island does fireworks every Friday night at 10:00, so we got a seat at the Beer Beach, and waited for the fireworks. I think the girlz would agree, this was the most fun night of the trip!! We had so much fun laughing at each other, and of course in our normal thing we do between the three of us, teasing the crap out of each other!! Boy did we need this trip, just to have time for the three of us to reconnect, and let loose… Some more then others… B, you know what I mean… LOL!!!

I think it was around 11:00 when we decided we should head back to the apartment. We had decided to take the subway back, it was just so much cheaper!! So us three drunk girlz headed to the subway station to get started on our 45 min trip back to the city. We got off the subway at Times Square, and of course had to grab a “slice of pie” (pizza) before getting back on the subway to head up to the apartment. YUMMO!!! Times Square was a MAD HOUSE!! It is so cool, all the lights, the people, the crazy bill boards… I could go there every weekend!!! We finally made it back to the apartment about 1:30 AM, what a long day, but WOW was it fun!! Time to go “nigh nigh” to get read for day #2 in the greatest city on the planet!!

After our fun evening, we sleep in a bit, and then decided to hit the streets of CNYC…. By the way, NYC in July…. UGH… HOT, HOT, HOT is all I can say!!!!!!!! During our last trip, we had done all the normal sight seeing things, so we decided we would just relax, and walk around, and see where our walking led us… We left the apartment, and headed north on Broadway, and ran into the restaurant from the Seinfeld show, we had breakfast/lunch there. It was kewl!! After that, we headed further north, and walked around Columbia University. What a beautiful campus!! We headed back south in search of an entrance to Central Park. We had seen most of the southern portion of the park 4 yrs ago, so we wanted to check out the northern section. Did I mention it was FREAKIN HOT!!! In case I didn’t, it was FREAKIN HOT!!! We found the park, and walked around for a bit, until we found a hot dog vendor. There is nothing better then a hot dog vendor in NYC!!! YUMMO!!!! We had decided that our diet for the weekend was going to consist of hot dogs from the vendor’s, and pizza slices at midnight. We were on a mission to have the cheapest NYC trip EVER!!! After the hot dog, we decided to head back to the apartment to cool off, and revive ourselves for the evening.

After an hour or 2 break for the FREAKIN HOT weather, we headed back out with a destination of a kewl NYC diner for dinner, and then on to Rockefeller Center to check out the plaza at night. Rox wanted to see all the flags lit up at night. Remember we were staying at 107th, Rockefeller Center was at around 50th, that was going to be a LONG walk, but we thought it was a good opportunity to check out some of the sights we haven’t seen yet. We were right, the walk was long, but we seen lots of kewl stuff!! We ran into Columbia Circle. It is a circle drive (like a round about) that is in front of the Trump Towers, right next to the south/west entrance to Central park. It has an awesome fountain surrounded by benches in the center, and there was a ton of people just hanging out. I am sure that is not only for the beauty, but considering it was soooo FREAKING HOT, and the water from the fountain made for a nice cool breeze when the wind hit, it was one of the few cool spots in the city! From there we continued south, and found a nice little Irish pub to grab a beer before we hit Rockefeller center. Finally we made it to our destination. It was AWESOME!!! The lights & fountains, and the flags all looked super kewl at night!! It was packed of course, but what is NYC with out 1000’s of people. J Well, it had been a long HOT & fun day, but we were ready to hail a cab (Hell no we weren’t making that walk back!!) to get back to the apartment, so we could catch a few things in the am before we had to head home… YEAH, an aircontioned cab… What a great way to end the night!!

Sunday morning we decided to walk to a park about two blocks over from the apartment, to just relax a bit on our last day, and get some more much needed bonding in. Of course by this time we all three were jonesing to get home to see our babies & hubbies, we were missing them something awful!!! Sunday was WAY FREAKIN HOTTER then Sat… OMG!! It was ungodly! Thank goodness it was a short day in the city, I don’t think we would have made it a full day in that heat.. New Yorkers are troopers I tell ya, I don’t know how they do it!!! We walked around a bit, found a place to eat, and then headed back to the apartment to grab our goods, and head for home……

The trip home was not nearly as fun as the rest of the weekend, but that will be its own separate blog… Unfortunately it is way to long to include in this one.

So our NYC trip of 2008 came to close, we were excited to get home to our families, but we had such a good time!!! Of course, we always have a good time when the three of us get together!!! I promise to add some pics, but our laptop is in for a tune up, so I will have to add them at the end of the week.

Thanx again to my BFF’;s for a GREAT weekend!!! I love you both!!!

Blog more soon…. Carrie Ann