subway, stadium, steak

the next morning, we got up at a decent time and headed out to grab breakfast at the bean’s new favorite place - ess-a-bagel.

and then we made our way to the nearest subway station to hop on a train to our first activity - a tour of yankee stadium.

even for someone who isn’t a yankees fan, the tour was interesting and full of fun memorabilia and commemorative plaques and statues to look at.  i love a good historical tour, and i think sports history is really cool.

i never knew the story of thurman munson, a catcher for the yankees in the 70s.  he was learning how to become a pilot so that he could go home regularly to his family in ohio, and unfortunately died while practicing landings.  the team retired his number and preserved his locker, moving it to the museum in 2009.

this was funny - i totally remember buying this candy bar a couple of times back in the day.

there’s a display of baseballs signed by every yankee player, and while i don’t know a ton of them i at least recognized this one:

we walked through the stadium, heading towards monument park down on field level.

monument park memorializes people who have passed on and were important parts of the team’s history.

it was cool to see the view from the fancy suites and premium seats.

and the last part of the tour featured a great photo op down on the field.

it was a fun tour, and if you’re into baseball at all i’d say that it’s totally worth a visit.

and of course, we stopped in the team store before we headed outta there.

then it was time to hop back on the subway and head back into the city for more exploring and shopping.

we’d been trying to get into FAO schwarz for days, and we finally timed it right.  the store was still open for hours and the line to get in wasn’t too long. 

the draw for us was the jellycat cafe, where they were “serving” up adorable food-themed plushies with little kawaii faces on them.

of course, there was a pretty good-sized section devoted to barbie.

and the bean stopped for this too.

meanwhile, the hub had secured some warm drinks for us.

then it was time to head back to the subway for our dinner reservation at peter luger in brooklyn. we were treated to a mini concert as we made our way to the platform.

the hub had recently been to the newest location in vegas, so it was kind of a novelty for him to visit the brooklyn location.

it was delicious, every bit of it.

this was the side…SIDE of thick-cut bacon.  so good.

and they handed us these chocolate coins with the bill.

the hub and the bean did some browsing online to find something for dessert, and we ended up at mochidoki for some delicious, fresh mochi ice cream treats.

and here was my final step count for the day. not too bad, yeah?

still in new york…

hi!  did ya miss me??

okay okay…i know, it’s been a minute.  and i’m still, STILL! recapping our NYC trip from DECEMBER.  i’m sorry!  i’d like to say that life has been crazy (although it kind of has), but if i’m being honest i’ve just been super lazy about blogging.  and i realized the other day that it’s because like lots of other folks, regularly microblogging via instagram stories is so easy.  

but i still want to hold on to this blog because it holds so many memories over the span of a lot of years.  and it’s fun to look back on it to see things we’ve done and places we’ve been, so here i am.  and we did so much fun stuff in new york that it all deserves a real post.  so let’s go!

we woke up bright and early and walked the short distance from our hotel to grand central station, where we hopped on the subway to take us down to battery park.

because we’d booked the trip rather last-minute (as per usual), by the time i knew what our dates were and went in to buy tickets to visit the statue of liberty, all that i was able to snag were pedestal tickets.  we really wanted to go all the way up to the crown, but it was not to be.

even worse, the elevator that would take us up to the pedestal had a crazy long line and you know the wans are not patient people.  and so even though stairs are my arch nemesis and i get winded after a couple of flights regardless of how much cardio i do when i work out…

UGH.  

when we finally got up as high as we were allowed to go, this was our view.  what in the actual fu…

at least the view of the city was cool.

yes, i am a dork.  we know this.

lunch was here:

and then we found one of the spots that the bean had found via tiktok for some treats.

later, while the hub headed off to visit a cigar lounge he wanted to check out, the bean and i made our way towards bryant park to hop aboard the tea around town bus.  i’d seen this on instagram (we are definitely easily influenced by social media) and booked it immediately.  a full afternoon tea while being driven around all the NYC sights on a frilly, flowery pink bus? YES.

after we were dropped back off at bryant park, we walked through the holiday market while waiting to meet up with the hub.  there was lots to see here, shopping and food booths and even a full-size ice skating rink.  but what caught our eye was this:

when the hub finally found us, we made our way back towards rockefeller center.  we had tickets for top of the rock because apparently we hadn’t had enough of seeing the city from up above.

they recently opened a new attraction called “the beam” - inspired by that old 1930s photo of the construction workers who were building rockefeller center having lunch on a steel bean almost 70 stories above the ground.  when i first saw people posting about it my anxiety kicked in and i was an instant HELL NO…which of course means:

to burn off all the pasta and afternoon tea treats, we walked over to the plaza and tried to have a “home alone” moment.

but there really wasn’t anything we could do in there once we got inside.  and we’d had a long busy day of fun as it was, so we called it a day and went back to the hotel.

besides, we had a few days left and much more fun to be had!  and i’m going to do my best to recap it all. i swear.