A Weekend in the Big Apple

For many years, New York City was just a day trip away from us and we visited regularly to watch shows and cross items off our bucket list one at a time. The last 1-1/2 years we lived on the east coast were marred by COVID though and we moved to Utah with some unfinished items on our to-do list. A few weekends ago, we finally got back there and jam packed in as much as we could into 3 days!

We researched  things to do that we've never done before, then walked 25,000+ steps a day (in rain or shine), and kept ourselves going pretty hard core the whole time. 

Here are a few highlights...

The main reason for our visit was to see some shows on Broadway  (Come From Away, Hadestown, and The Music Man). 

 We had heard great things about, "Come From Away" and saw that it was leaving Broadway soon, so that is what got us to buy our tickets in the first place.  It is  powerful, poignant, and non-stop energy. We LOVED the story and the performance!    

 Patrick Page in Hadestown was phenomenal. If you've never heard his crazy baritone voice, you should look up a video of him performing. WOW! 

The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster was so fun!

  They took a classic and made it even better.  We loved how they totally improvised in parts of it.

We also took a twilight walk across the Brooklyn Bridge...

Because we'd visited NYC so many times over the years, we've done and seen a lot of the big stuff before.   For this trip, we literally did a google search on unusual things to do in NYC, so we could broaden our horizons a bit.  The Met Cloisters is one of those things that popped up on that list.  The Met Cloisters is an outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that's dedicated to art from the Middle Ages, which means it contains a lot of religious art.  It's out of the way and a bit of a pain to get to, but we'd never been before and we enjoyed the opportunity to explore a new place. 

Even many of the pillars and archways were taken and reconstructed from medieval buildings in Europe.... 

The gardens were simple and beautiful--filled with the types of plants and flowers that would have been planted in the middle ages. 

The building had the vibes of an old European building, but it was actually built in the 1930's using actual pillars and arches from some medieval buildings.  

Since our tickets for The Cloisters were also good for the Met, we decided to take a quick trek through there too. 

We'd been there before, so just picked a few pieces we wanted to see...

Ellie picked this painting by George Seurat as the one she wanted to see. 

I wanted to some Monet and Van Gogh...

 WE also visited the Morgan Library ....the personal library of JP Morgan and a charming place that reminded us of the library in Beauty and Beast.  

If only the books hadn't been caged in...

There were gorgeous illuminated books from the Middle Ages and 3 Gutenberg Bibles...

and the architecture was phenomenal 

even the bookstore was charming and fun, though I didn't buy anything other than a couple postcards...

Another place we added to our list after our research was Theodore Roosevelt’s birthplace....

it had just barely reopened after being closed for a couple years for COVID, so it was a little dusty, but it was a cool place.  I read a book about Theodore Roosevelt ("The River of Doubt" by Candice Millard) earlier this year, so my interest was piqued to learn more about him.  

We also enjoyed checking out the new Harry Potter store....

It was as overpriced as you'd expect, but also delightful and fun.   As Harry Potter fans, we very much enjoyed perusing the Hogwarts paraphernalia.  

One of the aspects about a trip to NYC that had me most excited was to be able to try all the yummy gluten free restaurants we could find.    We had a simple breakfast at the hotel each morning, but we had fun exploring all the fun GF places for lunch and dinner.   Here is  a little sampling of some of the deliciousness we ate...

We happened to see an episode of  Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives that featured a restaurant that had a dedicated gluten free pizza kitchen.  It was called Keste and we eagerly added it to our list and gave it a try one night.  It was every bit worth the hype and ended up being one of our favorite food stops of the trip.   

I hate to admit it, but I ate more goodies (all gluten free!) than I normally eat in weeks!   Noglu was our favorite of the treat places!  It was on the pricey side, but the GF pastries were out of this world.   

I won't lie, I felt totally spoiled and indulgent by the end of this trip!   But it was good for our souls.  We enjoyed being together...

and just laughing...

and having fun! 

I'm guessing it will be a while before we visit NYC again, but, in the meantime, we've got some great memories to tide us over.