Home for the Holidays

Rockefeller Center

Shopping on 5th Ave

Ice skating in Central Park

Once again this year we headed home for Christmas. Only this time we took a two day layover in NYC to catch up with our friends Garry & Louise who were travelling through the US on their move from Australia to London and our friends Pat & Nicole who moved back to Connecticut last year and we so very much miss. Two days is not nearly enough but was worth it anyway as NYC is one of my favorite places.

After the 20+ hours in flight time and many movies later, we arrived late on Saturday and ordered some proper NY pepperoni pan pizza (its just not the same in Australia) before hitting the hay. I actually look forward to the flight home as I get to catch up on all the newest movies. The first thing I do when I get in my seat is to plan out in what movies to watch and in what order I will watch them.

Sunday morning we had to get up early to meet the others for brekkie. We stopped at a nearby NYC diner where we were happy to get some omelettes and greasy greasy hash browns smothered in ketchup!...oh the simple things you miss. We have been to NYC a few times but never in Christmas time and we were very excited. The rest of the day would be spent walking down 5th avenue and taking in all of the shop windows including Sax, Macy's and FAO Shwartz (where we saw the big piano and a giant lego Santa and Wookie). The sidewalks and storefronts were so packed there were lines to get in the store and lines to just view the window displays! We also added in a trip to Rockefeller Center to see the tree and ice skaters. It took us just about all day and besides a Starbucks hot carmel apple cider and some roast nuts from the street vendors we had not eaten since brekkie. We took a quick pit stop in Times Square at the Dave & Busters for some beers (Blue Moon oh how I love you!!) and to check the Steelers score. Then we headed out to walk around Grenwich village, have dinner at Rosa Mexicano (Yum! Proper Guacamole!) and another round of beers at Heartland Brewery (Pumpkin Ale!). Day 1 was definitely a success.

Day 2 started out with Starbucks again where we met up with another friend, Natalie, who was in town visiting her boyfriend on rotation from Australia. Then we all headed to Central Park for a walk around one of my favorite places. We watched the ice skaters there for a while before waiting in line for lunch at Carnegie Deli where the corned beef sandwiches and NY cheesecake were as big as your head! I think we made ourselves sick on it. We tried to walk it off while visiting Bryant Park with its christmas markets and ice skating and the beautiful NYC library (which had an interesting display of ancient jewish, islam, and christian scripts). But we were just not hungry for dinner that night even though we were meeting up with Jared's friend Jenn and her fiance who live in NYC. We met them at restaurant row and headed to another brewery to catch a low key dinner and maybe even the Penguins game :)

Then we had a week back in Pittsburgh to catch up with a lot of our friends and spend Christmas with the families. We also packed in lots of shopping and a few of our favorite things (like a Pens game, Fatheads, BW3's, Max&Erma's chicken tortilla soup, and lots more Starbucks trips).