30 Day Challenge: Day 22

Day 22: Favorite City

I know it's so cliche, but my favorite city in the world is New York City. I never had the intense desire to go there like some people do. But in October 2009, my friend Alysha and I went up there for a whirlwind 24 hours. We flew up there on Saturday, after I ran my first ever 5k, and we came back home the next night. Once we got up there, we shuttled over to our hotel, got settled, and asked the hotel receptionist, "what is the ONE place in NYC that you HAVE to go?" and she said, "Times Square."

So we found out how to get to Times Square via shuttles and the subway, and when we first came out from underground, I was overwhelmed. The intensity of the lights was astonishing. The first thing I remember seeing was the Mary Poppins Broadway sign, and I wanted to drop everything and try to get tickets to a show. But I contained myself, and we decided to go ahead and get some food. We went to Planet Hollywood because Alysha had never been, and it was delicious. I had the salmon and rice and a strawberry daiquiri.. yum! Our waitress commented on how nice we were and asked where we were from, so we had to show her a little southern hospitality and gave her an extra large tip ;] it was fun to watch her face when she saw it! After dinner, we walked around Times Square, going into the giant Toys R Us, the M&M store, the Hershey store, perusing the Theater District and drooling over all the shows we wanted to see, and taking tons of pictures.

The next morning, we went to Ground Zero because I really wanted to go. It was kind of a disappointment because they were rebuilding and we couldn't see anything, but it was still pretty powerful. We were going to see A Steady Rain, a FABULOUS two-man play featuring Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. Oh. Em. Gee. It was seriously amazing. But before we got there, we were running seriously late and were starving, so we literally ran to a pizza place and ate pizza while running to the theater. I managed to stop and get a cute New York bag on the way. The play was so amazing. It was 90 minutes long and over before I knew it. It just captivated me from beginning to end. When the play was over, we had less than an hour to get back to our hotel, get our stuff, and get to the airport to catch our flight, so we were booking it. We caught a cab and made it to our hotel just in time to take the shuttle, checked our luggage and ran to go through the line to get to our gate.. only to find out that our flight had been delayed. We decided to get food while we waited, which was great since we hadn't eaten much that day. We flew home, and the best trip of my life was over.