The Nellie Spot

This was by far the best day we had in New York! First off, it was our 5 Year Anniversary! We celebrated by sleeping in an extra hour. Then we hit the city. But when we walked out of the hotel, it was raining pretty hard. I was sporting a beautiful clear poncho, while Allison was more kosher in a raincoat and umbrella. By the time we walked to Times Square, got our bus tickets and loaded up on the bus, the rain had pretty much stopped. We went past the Madison Square Garden building (which is ironically circular), the NYC Post Office (larger than Fayetteville's entire square), and stopped at the Empire State Building. We went to the top, though they said there was zero visibility due to the storm that just moved through. We went anyway. We could see a couple of miles around, still enough to impress me. I'm petrified of heights, but I handled it pretty well. After coming down, we hoped back on the bus and went to the SoHo district (interesting fact: the "Ho" part of SoHo stands for Houston street, but is pronounced in NYC "howsten", not like the city in Texas). We shopped around SoHo for a while and ate lunch at a little deli place...very tasty.

We walked on down to Wall Street, stopped at Starbucks, then went to Battery Park and to the Statue of Liberty pier. We missed the last outing that goes to the island and into the Statue, but we could use our tickets (that were included in the bus tour price!) for a 1 hour cruise around the bay and up the Hudson. We got to see Ellis Island, took some good pictures of the skyline, and got pretty close to the Statue of Liberty. I have to admit, I was only midly enthusiastic about seeing her...but when we got closer, I was overcome with her majesty and her symbolism. Truly amazing. We went on around and under the Brooklyn bridge, then back to the dock. About the time we got off, it started pouring on us. We jumped on the tour bus and rode it to the Fish Market. From there, we took a cab across the Brooklyn Bridge into (yeah, you guessed it!) Brooklyn. We took the recommendation of Andrew & Virginia Steger to eat at a pizza joint called Grimaldi's, and we weren't disappointed! It was voted the best pizza place in New York City, so it was also really crowded. Thankfully, we beat the crowd by about 3 minutes. The place is pretty much underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, so after a fantastic pizza, we walked down to a big pier where we could see the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and the NYC skyline. I got some super photos here that I'll post later. There's an ice cream shop on the pier, so we got some ice cream while we were there...again, great stuff.

Now the REALLY cool part. As we were walking back toward Grimaldi's to catch a cab, there was a line formed outside waiting to eat there. We walk by the line and I take a double-looksies at a guy that looks really familiar. I stop and grab my camera...whisper to Allison "that looks a lot like Mike Myers!". She turns and looks, then get excited. We watch him for about 15 seconds trying to decide if we should bother him for a picture. As we were walking up, the owner of Grimaldi's approached him and ushered him inside. I missed my photo-op with him, but seeing a famous person was pretty freaking sweet. I always wondered what I would be like if I saw someone famous (like Mike Myers famous...super famous)...and I thought I'd be cool and not get all that excited. I was wrong...I wanted to pester him for a photo and get him to do Dr. Evil's finger pose for me. Oh well...

We caught a cab back to Times Square where we walked around for a bit, then went back to the hotel. What a fantastic anniversary!!!!