New York to Philly

Saturday was a rainy, miserable day in New York. We were expecting the rain and we were prepared. We decided to minimize the amount of time we were in the rain so we slept in and took our time getting everything packed up.

Once we were packed up we checked our bags at the hotel and we were on our way. Our first, stop was of course breakfast. We went to a deli near our hotel. We got our favorite NY breakfast - omelets, potatoes, and toast. It is always a hit. Alison got her usual, a western omelet, but they forgot to add cheese. So halfway through our meal I switched and gave her my ham and cheese omelet.

We got on the subway and headed uptown. We thought we would stop by and see the temple, but it was so rainy we changed our mind. Instead, we went over to Levain bakery to get cookies. They are seriously the world's best cookies, especially when you eat them right at the bakery. They are hot and gooey. You can't beat them.

World's best cookies!!!!

After the bakery, we just wanted to get out of the rain. We headed over to the Museum of Natural History. The line to get in was super long - it was winding around the outside of the building, but we had our umbrellas and we weren't in much of a hurry. We stuck it out. By the time we got in we only had about a half an hour. We walked through the African mammal exhibit and the dinosaur exhibit. It was a nice way to pass the afternoon and it kept us out of the rain.

After the museum, we needed to head back to broadway. This should have been easy because there is a subway entrance inside the natural history museum. However, due to construction, the C and B lines were not running downtown on local tracks. If we wanted to take the C or B train we would have had to take the express uptown to 125th street and then back down. This would have taken too long so instead, we ran over to 79th street to catch the 1 train. We had to run pretty quickly through the rainy streets, which meant we got a little wet. Also, Alison wasn't sure with the construction whether or not the 1 train would be running on local tracks. I was pretty sure I heard that on the red track local trains were running downtown (only express were going uptown). I took a gamble and it paid off. We were able to take the 1 train to 50th street, which was really close to where we needed to be. We got to the theater and picked up our tickets. Then we got to stand in line in the rain for 20 minutes while we waited for them to open the theater doors. That wasn't our favorite part of the day.

Our last stop in New York was the broadway show Cats playing at the Neil Simon theater. The Musical Cats is one of those famous shows that we wanted to see (especially since Kristin and Dan got way into Cats last year). We try not to listen to the music from the show ahead of time because we like to not have any expectations going into the show. For Cats, we almost wished we had listened to the music ahead of time because some of the lyrics probably would have been easier to understand. Fortunately, Kristin and Dan had prepped us a little bit so we weren't really expecting a strong storyline. We focused on enjoying the singing and dancing. The show was pretty spectacular, but we didn't really start to love it until the second act. Our favorite cat was Mr. Mistoffelees. The Gumbi cat reminded us of our CC cat because "she sits and sits and sits and sits." The performances of Memory were also incredible. Overall we loved Cats it is now one of our all-time favorite broadway shows.

Moonlight, turn your face to the moonlight

Let your memory lead you

Open up, enter in

If you find there the meaning of what happiness is

Then a new life will begin.

 - Cats

After the show, we were in a hurry. We had to grab our luggage and then get to the Penn Station to catch a train. I was very aggressive in hailing a cab (rainy days in NY make it more difficult to get a cab). Ironically, we got an Uber (he saw me trying to hail a cab). He took us to our hotel and waited while I grabbed our luggage. Then took us over to Penn Station. We thought that we had a lot less time to get there (our ticket said we should be there 45 minutes early). Turns out you don't really need to be there until 10-15 minutes before you leave. Since we had plenty of time we grabbed some pizza for dinner. This was much better pizza than we had the night before.

We then caught our train and headed to Philadelphia. The train ride was awesome. It was easy and comfortable. We would totally do that again. It was quick too. We got on the train around 6:10pm and arrived in Philly at 7:40pm. Once we got here we took a cab over to the Airbnb we are staying at with Alison's family.

They had arrived shortly before us and ordered some Indian food for dinner. We had a little Indian buffet at the apartment and played games and visited until we were all tired and ready for bed. It was a good day. It is good to be here with the whole family.

Skylee had Lucky Charms

Sharing Tasty Cakes with Skylee