i heart ny.

new york. in april. things are blooming, and there's sunshine, and there's the plaza hotel, and central park, and the babies are all safe at home, loving time with their mimi & pa. we snuck away for a few days, shawn working, me just, well, alone. with my camera, in new york city. for four days. shawn was worried i wouldn't have enough to do, or that i might get lonely. all by myself. for the first time in, well, you know - since the dinosaurs and all. oh, it was glorious. i loved it all. except for the one day i got a tiny bit turned around, and walked about 14 blocks in the wrong direction. but even then, i loved it. i'm breaking it down by days, because there were a LOT of photos. like, a lot. you can also see the whole set on flickr.

day one.
day two.
day three.
day four.

nyc days 3 & 4

Ugh. it's new york, right people? so you understand that there is so much to tell, and so much to do, and there was almost an entire day spent wandering through soho and visiting some shops i'd been yearning to get inside for a long, long time. there was dinner with shawn in a quirky, dark pub. there was a confection from vesuvius bakery in soho that included these things: toasted, crusty seeded sourdough bread, warm sweet ricotta cheese, and a drizzle of SPICY CARAMEL SAUCE. yep. there was purl soho, and of course, glassybaby nyc. there was cappucino all by myself, just sitting at a little bar inside a shop and enjoying it. there was plenty of time to photograph all the buildings, bikes, and yarn i felt like. there was a bath ordered up from our personal butler service, ready and waiting for me when i walked in the room. (shut. up. there are people who live like this? really? shut up.) it was unreal. really. a series of days, IN A ROW, where i was responsible for no one but myself. tomorrow, our last day. greenmarket, sunday brunch. mmmm.

day two. brooklyn and tiny m&m's.

brooklyn. took the subway to brooklyn, all by myself. felt like a big girl in my big girl panties and pretty sunglasses. brooklyn botanical gardens was a delight, cherry trees all in bloom, nannies and babies roaming, tourists, tiny old ladies, and hipster dads all mingling in delicious sunshine and pink fluff petals. scrumptious. wandered with my camera for quite a few hours.








it was such a beautiful day, really the perfect definition of spring. i headed back to the city, only this time i got even more adventurous and decided to get off a few stops early to go to chinatown. i heard there were some sweet fabric shops just begging to be explored. unfortunately, my innate sense of direction apparently doesn't work from under the ground. i wound up a bit turned around, which was FINE, really. i used my iphone to navigate a bit, ended up in tribeca, which was pretty cool, but the whole sitch got a bit LESS cool when i realized i had wandered about 20 blocks in the wrong direction and was now very close to the financial district. folks, my hotel was by central park. my feet were tired, my camera bag was suddenly very, very heavy, and i decided to give in and just catch a cab. at 5-ish. near the financial district. pause with me now, and then laugh at me. hard. laugh so hard soda snorts out your nose. it only took me 45 min to get a cab that was going the wrong direction. this included one guy who stopped and then laughed at me when i told him where i was going. i didn't cry. really. i didn't. much. when i finally DID get a cab, he'd never heard of the Plaza Hotel. Um. Kay. Then he took me the longest stinking way possible, while I NAVIGATED. FROM THE BACK SEAT. WITH MY IPHONE. and at the end, i just paid him the $40 because my feet hurt and, well, mostly it was just cause my feet hurt. does there need to be a better reason?

after i met shawn at the hotel and recovered (read that "had a large glass of wine") in the room for a bit, we headed out for dinner. we ate at a little place the mister usually goes for work, trattoria dell'arte, which was super yum. this is why i like traveling with him: i'm kind of a giant wuss/baby/fraidycat when it comes to telling people i don't like what they've given me. for instance, the first table we were shown to was about 2 inches from the table next to it. pretty sure the man next to us was almost in my lap. pretty sure they had to pull the table OUT for shawn to get in. not exactly the nice, romantic dinner date i was looking for. so shawn nicely, but firmly, asked for another table. we chose to sit on the little street patio, which had heaters, and was sweet and lovely. DISCLAIMER: this is how you know you live in oregon: when it starts to rain (sprinkle, really) on said patio, and the wind picks up, you just put on your sweater. and then about 20 min later, you realize that every soul that was sitting on the patio but you has gone inside, and you didn't notice. and the waiters don't want to come out and serve you. :) anyhow, we finished up our bottle of wine and by that time the rain had stopped, and we went walking towards times square. not because we love it all that much, but because we had made a promise to our baby girl that we'd bring her tiny m&m's from the store in new york. and we did. $30 later. ha.

nyc, day one.

i'll pretty much do anything to get the heck out of here for a few days, including being willing to basically spend the night in the airport. we met my parents after their flight, which got in at like 11:15. our flight left at 6:30 the next morning, so we did a handoff, giving them our car and crashing out at the airport until we could check in at 4:3o. other than witnessing a guy get patted down by the coppers and then calmly inform them of his outstanding drug warrant, the weed in his shoe, and the needles (recently used) in his bag, it was a pretty uneventful night. we tried to get some rest.



we landed at JFK early, like 9 a.m., and headed into the city. my man looks good in the city, folks. i'm just sayin. :)


we checked into our hotel early...because when you're staying at the Plaza, and you're a president's club member, that's how you roll. they offered to carry our bags up and have our personal butler (no pun) unpack for us, but i kinda felt like that was a little much. i had a vision of a man in white gloves fluffing out my spanx, and that was enough to make me politely decline.
anyhow - the Plaza. There's a reason Eloise liked it so much, folks. it's scrumptious.





Shawn had to run to a meeting, so he let me loose on the city. can you even believe it? and here's how much of a GIANT nerd i am - i went straight to the New York Public Library. right? i like it there. it's pretty, and quiet, and just full of books. sigh.



somehow, i managed to while away the afternoon. sunset found me meeting the mister in central park for a walk.



We even dressed up (heels, people, HIGH heels. i kid you not) for dinner and drinks out - dinner at Five Points (yuuuuummmmeeeeey) and drinks with my sister-in-law's sister (our family is cool!) at one of my most fave new places ever...Pravda....which is essentially a russian speakeasy that is UNDER THE GROUND, peeps. they sell about 18 trillion different kinds of vodka, i couldn't read the "men" & "women" signs on the bathrooms (they were in russian), and my fresh pear martini was killer.






we even passed possibly my favorite window display of all time....before we caught a cab back to our little slice of heaven.

snow.

i like winter. i like it a lot. especially when it stays in the mountains, all the way into april. i like taking off for a quick weekend getaway, staying in a cozy lodge, spending a sunny day on the slopes watching all three of my guys rock the snowboards. i like a baby that naps so i can sit in the lodge, drink coffee, and read. those boys are cute. so is my baby girl, who puts the delicious in snow bunny. (? yes. it's my blog. i can mix metaphors.)

"weady to go no'bodeing" she says. um.

loving that hipstamatic for iphone.

heading home....

down the mountain...to spring!