The trip to NYC was really fun. Here’s the day-by-day recap:

Wednesday:
I got in late, chatted with the fam for a while, ate some awesome leftovers that they had saved for me (that’s the thing about showing up at 11:00 at night — you miss dinner in the fancy restaurant), then we crashed for the night. Nothing really notable about the flight, except that my back, which had been hurting for the previous couple of days already, was made significantly worse by sitting on a cramped plane seat over 8 hours. Mom’s painkillers helped.

Thursday:
We got up & I was dragged against my will to the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. “So you can tell your grandchildren you’ve been there” was my mother’s reason for going. Hmmm. Yeah. Not much to say about that. We got there pretty late, so we really only saw the end of it (which I was incredibly grateful for). I saw Kermit, Garfield & Jimmy Neutron. Oh, and Atomic Grover. Very exciting.

After that, we did the sight-seeing stuff — we started off at Grand Central Station, then walked up 5th Avenue to Rockefeller Center. The tree is up, even though it’s not decorated yet, but it was cool to see it. My parents decided sometime while we were walking around that my winter coat is less than sufficient, so they dropped $100 on buying me a new one, which was pretty sweet. The store also had a sale on pashmina’s and my parents offered to get me one, but I said no. I’m such a cheap shopper, I was a bit overwhelmed by the $100 already. I was also tempted to get one of the fake Prada purses that people were selling on the street for $20 — I don’t know why I like the idea of having a Prada purse so much, I’m usually not a designer-brand kind of girl. Doesn’t matter, though, because I didn’t buy one. Anyway, we also walked through St. Patrick’s Cathedral (awesome) & Central Park (also awesome) before we headed back to Tracy’s.

For Thanksgiving night, we got our to-go Thanksgiving feast (everyone carried a bag), walked down to Times Square, got on a subway & headed out to Brooklyn to have dinner with Tracy’s friend Amanda and Amanda’s parents. Funny thing, Amanda & her family are British, so this was their first Thanksgiving. It was a very fun evening, and the food was incredible.

Friday:
It was rainy so we went to the Met. Everybody got to pick an exhibit, except Dad who was basically just along for the ride. Mom & Tracy wanted to see the Egyptian exhibit (some of those relics are sooooo cool!!), then I wanted to see the 19th century European painters. I’m honestly not sure who I like better between Van Gogh & Seurat. I love the sort of craziness & the 3-D texture of Van Gogh, but the painstaking detail that Seurat used in all those millions of little dots just makes me want to cry because I can’t imagine ever being THAT dedicated to something. Anyway, loved them both. Then Chris wanted to see the Asian/Islamic art exhibit, which I thought might be kind of dull, but it totally wasn’t. I really dig the Hindu icons & artifacts — there was one sculpted piece of the Goddess of Transcendent Wisdom who was sitting cross-legged on a lotus flower, and I just loved her. I want her in my living room. The Met was probably my favorite part of the whole trip, except that by the time we were gettng ready to leave, the crowds of people were really starting to get to me. I don’t usually get claustrophobic, but I started to feel kind of panicky & anxious after a while.

Friday night, we went to dinner at a very cute little restaurant in Tracy’s neighborhood called Rachel’s. Then we sent Dad back to Tracy’s apartment to watch football (his choice, not ours) while the rest of us went to see “Movin’ Out”. I was really kind of dreading that, and while it was somewhat cheesy, it wasn’t as painfully cheesy as I was expecting, and a couple of the dancers were pretty amazing. So the fact that I am willing to relent & say something nice about the show at all is pretty impressive.

Saturday:
Got up at 5:45 a.m., got dressed, walked to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to catch the 6:30 shuttle to the Newark Airport. Flew home. Realized once again how much I love Seattle — I love that there’s the big-city aspect of having tons of things that you can choose to do on any given day, but that there’s also enough room to breathe.

Nate & I went out for crab legs for dinner (god, that was delicious), then we came back here & chilled and watched a movie. And in the interest of keeping this blog somewhat PG-rated, that’s all I’m going to say about that.