There's No Place Like Home - Final Chapter

Okay, so let me finish already. We take a food tasting tour in Greenwich Village with our tour guide, Kurt. He reminds me of Carrot Top and Conan O'Brien. He was awesome. We toured all of the local shops and restaurants, learned about the community. We ended our tour around 2. We headed back to the hotel and changed for the Yankees game. We hopped on the #4 and headed for the Bronx. We went a little early to avoid all of the game traffic. I noticed as we got closer to out exit, we became the minority on the subway. There were many black, hispanic, and asian people and not many caucs. I wasn't worried a bit. There was another couple by us who was. They kept clutching their bags and looking around nervously. I just looked at Josh and shook my head.

The Yankees won against the Baltimore Orioles that Tuesday evening. We headed back to the hotel and ordered Chinese. I had the scallops with snow peas. It was okay.

Here is where the story gets a little interesting. Josh happened to get poison ivy before we left, but it didn't start showing up until Monday. It was getting worse, and soon it was infected. Ugh. Anyway, we had to go to the emergency room. We went and found Bellevue Hospital. Not the famous "crazy" hospital, but the regular one. Wednesday morning found me sitting in a waiting room with four outspoken men, just coming from their "program". They were in there to detox. Lovely. Talk about an experience. My boyfriend has to go to the hospital on our vacation and I get to be entertained by these guys in the waiting room. We waited for quite awhile, but he was finally seen. We were in the hospital for about five hours. We had to finally break down and take a taxi to our hotel so we wouldn't be late for our show.

We saw Mamma Mia on Broadway. I got us great seats. We were in the second row, center stage. This is my favorite musical and I have now seen it seven times. After the show, we were walking back to the hotel and decided to eat at Mortons Steakhouse. Everything here is a la carte. My steak alone was $40. It was delicious. I had a rib eye, baked potato, and a salad wedge that I shared with Josh. Yum!

We walked back to the hotel and called it an early night. Thursday we headed for Chinatown and Little Italy. I think it is sad that Little Italy has been reduced down to a four square block. The Chinese are taking over. It was actually sad. I was amazed by all of the fish markets in Chinatown. It almost reminded me of Seattle, but dirtier. Every time we walked by a certain shop, there would be an Asian man or woman trying to sell us something. I did get to see an actual cooked boar's head under hot lights in one of the shop window. In Little Italy, we went to a corner deli and shared a grilled prosciutto and provolone sandwich. Then we made our way back to Greenwich Village. We fell in love with one of the restaurants on the food tasting tour and decided to go back and have lunch there. The Palmas was such a quaint little restaurant with a garden in the back. I had a vegetarian panini and roasted fingerling potatoes. It was sincerely the best damn panini I have ever had. We finished, stopped off at Rocco's Pastry shop and picked up a half dozen cookies for dinner :)

Friday morning found us at one of the many Starbucks in the city where I got a pumpkin spice latte, extra hot. We hopped on the tour bus in Times Square and decided to do the tour. It was well worth the money. We saw everything. The Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, The Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn, and Central Park, just to name a few. We had lunch in Little Korea, which is about one block long, and Josh got to experience authentic Korean food restaurant style. It was so much fun and so good, I had to call my mom and tell her all about it.

We went back to the hotel and rested and then proceeded to take the night bus tour to see the city lights. We had dinner at this wonderful little Italian place on 9th street and I was in heaven. I had the Cornish game hen and Josh decided on the seafood portofino. Delicious.

Again, we walked back to the hotel and called it a night. We wanted to get up early on Saturday to pack and have time to get to the airport. We took a black car to the airport, ready for our flight to leave at 9:30. We get on the plane (Midwest) and start heading to the runway. The plane stops and turns around. We had engine problems and had to get off the plane. They cancelled our flight and had us flying with other airlines. We were suppose to arrive in Kansas City at one, but had to detour to Detroit and then to Kansas City. We arrived at 9 pm. I was mad. This was the only bad part of the trip.

We headed to Josh's brother's house and I crashed as soon as we got there. We hit the Chief's game on Sunday, got burned to a crisp, and then drove the 2 1/2 hours home. It was a wonderful vacation.

Now it's back to the daily grind at work. woo hoo....