New York Weekend - Saturday

W Hotel Downtown

Chris's birthday is coming up, so we wanted to do a little weekend getaway.  With my new job, I'm not able to take much time off, so we decided a weekend would be perfect.  After many suggestions, New York City became our destination, though we never made specific plans as to what we should do.

A quick trip to Hotwire scored us a great hotel room at the W Hotel in downtown.  It was actually right next to the site of the World Trade Center site.  We got a ridiculously low rate - the W Hotels are usually $350+ per night, but we paid less than a quarter of that! Awesome. They're great hotels. The beds are comfortable, the furnishings are always super funky and trendy, and they have Bliss brand soaps and such, which Chris seems to love.

Saturday morning, it was drizzly and grey in Boston, and not so different in NYC. So, what did we do? We went online and bought tickets to the... ahem... Yankees game! We're not at all Yankees fans, but we've heard that the new stadium is a ridiculous monstrosity, so we wanted to check it out.  We also felt like we robbed them as we bought tickets for $13 each!

The drive down was a cinch, I even finished my last two chapters of Chemistry homework!  We arrived during the bottom of the 2nd inning of the game, which was fine with us because it eliminated the traffic into the parking garage, and we didn't really care about the game itself.  The rumors were true - the stadium was huge!

Outside of Yankee Stadium

Inside Yankee Stadium

All I wanted to do is yell "GO RED SOX!"

Statue in City Park

I have to say, despite being in the highest deck, our seats weren't actually that bad!  We stayed slightly dryer than those in the lower seats.  We stayed about 5-6 innings, ate some blah cheese pizza and the required baseball game soft pretzel, then took off. The Yankees were winning, and it's no fun to see the bad guys winning (even though the Sox were giving the Blue Jays a pounding up in Toronto!).

After the game, we went to the hotel and checked in, then walked up to Times Square.  It was a nice 4ish mile walk, which we both needed after the cheesy-bready pizza!  On the way, we stopped at Strand to peek at books, then at Crumbs Bakeshop for an Artie Lange cupcake.  It was ok, but not the best we've ever had. 

When we got into Times Square, it was about 8PM, and time for dinner.  We were still dressed in jeans, so we couldn't go anywhere fancy, and there was no way we were going to go to a tourist trap or chain restaurant.  We stepped down one of the sides streets and stumbled upon the Glass House Tavern. It was quiet, the service was excellent, and the food was simple, but fantastic.  I had a scallop and calamari puttanesca spaghetti, and Chris had a primavera pasta with zucchini, summer squash, and tomatoes. It was delicious.  We also shared a bottle of wine that was delicious, I just wish I remembered what kind it was!

It was such a great day!!