- Kristin, Matt Stafford, and myself.
My wife, who is amazing, planned a surprise trip for me on my birthday. She planned it almost 2 months out, and only told me that we had plane tickets and a swag hotel. I was pumped. I love surprises, so I wasn’t even trying to pry the details out of her. The only instructions I had was what to pack.
So imagine my excitement as we stand in line to board the plane. I wanted to scream, but I was afraid of making the TWA officers nervous.
After landing, we checked into the Warwick Hotel, which was a very cool, upscale place a couple blocks from Times Square. We then walked to The London Hotel bar, which is owned by Gordon Ramsay. We had a drink and some food, the atmosphere was very dark, but it gave a really cool feel of the city; mostly due to the crowd of business men still in their suits at the bar. I stole the pen the waitress gave me to sign the check (sshh). By then it was nearly midnight, so we walked back to the hotel and got some rest for the big day ahead.
On Friday, we got up very early, around 7:30, and went to grab some breakfast at a place called Lenny’s. Had an omelet and some coffee, then we did a little bit of walking around the avenues. We passed the Today Show, which was filming, and saw the big crowd around the windows. I saw the Nintendo World store and flipped out. They had all kinds of Nintendo stuff there, not just games. It was a neat experience to see an entire video game culture on a street corner.
We took a bus tour, which lasted about 3 hours. I took a lot of snapshots of the scenery, and tried to get us in a few of the pics too because looking at pictures of buildings gets very boring! We grabbed lunch at a place called Schnipper’s in the city, then walked around Times Square. That place is insane. It’s contstantly busy, neon lights and huge crowds of people and tourists. We took a few pictures and got back on the bus for the uptown tour, which was much shorter. We drove through Harlem and some guy was pretending to throw grenades at our bus. Scary!
Friday night we ate dinner at Bar Americain, owned by Bobby Flay of the Iron Chef series. Our friends Chip and Stephanie met us there, and dinner was amazing! As we were leaving, we see none other than Matt Stafford on the sidewalk on his phone. He was eating there too, probably with his agent and 4 cheerleaders. As UGA grads, all four of us immediately recognized him. We waited for him to get off the phone, then I yelled at him before he got back to the door to get his attention. When we said we were UGA grads, he wasn’t nearly as surprised as I thought he’d be. I mean, we’re way up here in NYC and it just so happens to be draft weekend — maybe he’d already run into a few of them. We got a couple pics and wished him good luck. I think we gave him luck too, since he became a multi millionaire 20 hours later.
The rest of the night was spent drinking liquor at a few different bars, including one where a few mixologists would create a drink based off of a liquor you named. I woke up Saturday with a nasty hangover, which was short-lived, thank science.
Saturday was less tourist-oriented. Kristin, Steph, Chip and myself walked through Central Park, which was amazing. It’s more than just a park, it’s like a city of its own. There are museums that trail alongside it, and tons and tons of people everywhere. Oh and Chip wore some badass gold shoes. We did some shopping on 5th, some really cool places called Uniqlo, which is like Japanese Ikea for clothing — it’s the only one in the US right now. Also this place called Topman. They had some really cool, trendy stuff, but it was way overpriced.
Saturday afternoon we got lunch at a Japanese market/restaurant. It was very strange, but apparently very common in NYC. They had open cold-storage sections like in a grocery store, but you could buy sushi there and eat it at the tables by the window. Very cool and authentic! We also hit Canal St, which is famous for their replica products. They have handbags/purses/wallets/sunglasses/Rolex watches/DVDs that aren’t out yet and all kinds of other replica business. It’s highly illegal, but there were rows and rows of people with all this stuff out on the street.
After Canal St, we decided to part ways to get ready for dinner. That night we ate at Gotham, which is an older place in NYC. I had oysters and then rack of lamb, a first for me, and it was pretty good. No celebrity sightings that night, but we did go to a comedy club near Times Square. It’s the same place that the opening skit to the Seinfeld show is filmed — y’know, the one where he’s doing a standup routine in front of a brick wall — it’s called Broadway-something. We didn’t get picked on, but there were some annoying kids from Brooklyn in the corner who would not shut up, and a few of the comedians were roasting them.
We did a lighter night of drinking, due to everyone going all out on Friday. We went to a bar called Blue and Gold, which was much cheaper than any of the other bars in the area. Last time Kristin was in NYC, she saw Paul Dano from There Will Be Blood and Little Miss Sunshine. Celebs everywhere in NYC! We got in around 2 and crashed, sad to leave the next day.
On Sunday, we got up and did some more walking around the city. I wanted to see as much of it as I could, because there’s just too much to do in a single weekend. After an hour or so, we met Steph for lunch and chatted for an hour or so, then headed to the airport. We were a good 2 hours early to the gate, since La Guardia is not nearly as busy as Hartsfield-Jackson; we’re used to insanely long security lines.
It was an exhausting trip, but I’m so glad I had the opportunity to go. It was the one place I really wanted to visit. Flights were so cheap, I fully plan on getting back up there soon.
My Volume Down button isn’t functioning properly anymore. You have to press it insanely hard for it to move, and even then it only moves one or two hash marks down. It’s a huge pain to turn down the ringer, and impossible to do while talking to someone without asking them to hold on.
