NYC Day 2

I should probably mention that the weather was wonderful the entire time we were there but it was PERFECT our first and second day. We were fortunate because the week before we were told it had been cold and rainy. Thank you, Lord!

Yesterday I forgot to mention the name of our hotel. We stayed at The Muse. We LOVED it! It's a boutique hotel and it isn't very big. It's located on 46th street between 6th and 7th Avenue.

It is in the perfect location. We were 1/2 a block from the heart of Times Square, and only a couple of blocks from Rockefeller Center. Not to mention we were able to walk to Central Park and other tourist attractions.

I would definitely stay at this hotel again.

Day 2, which was Friday, began with us walking to Times Square to buy our ferry tickets and to get information about the bus tours. After that we headed to Rockefeller Center to get a small breakfast and look around. We stopped in H & M just to get our feel of it before we came back later in the day to shop. We eventually arrived at our main destination for the day which was Serendipity.

It was my sister's birthday so this is where she wanted to eat. I was completely on board with that!

While waiting for it to open we met some more Southern ladies with wonderful southern accents. They were from Alabama so we took turns taking pictures for each other. I'm serious, the majority of people we ran into either had Southern accents or spoke a completely different language.

Once we got our table I immediately went to look around in the gift area. Since I collect cookbooks I was thrilled to find out they had some there. And the best part is that one of the owners/cookbook author was there! I bought a cookbook and he offered to sign it.

One of the ladies working there asked where we were from and of course I told her Arkansas. She smiled and asked if I knew that two of the owners were from Little Rock. Uh, NO! I did not! Well actually one was from Little Rock and the other Hazen. It mentions that in the cookbook. I was even more excited that I bought it after learning that fact.

Menu

We had the waiter take our picture at our table which was in front of the cool clock only there happens to be a half-naked man right next to him so I didn't think it would be blog appropriate. This blog is family-friendly!

The food was good but interesting. I'm not even sure what I ordered but I liked it.

The main event had less to do with the meal and more to do with the dessert!

Frozen Hot Chocolate....wow! It was so good! And yes, the recipe is in my new cookbook!

After our wonderful experience at Serendipity's we strolled back towards Rockefeller Center and our hotel while stopping along the way. One of the places we stopped was an adorable candy store. I think it was called Dylan's Candy something. It was so cute.

I loved this! So cute!

We also stopped at Bloomingdale's, Gap, another H & M, and my personal favorite, the Lindor Truffle Shop. I might have bought one, two, or 36.

I didn't eat many while I was there so I made sure they arrived safely home to Little Rock.

We also stopped at FAO Schwartz. It is the cutest store. I've been in them before and still love going in them. My favorite part was the "dress up" area they have. Walls filled with the best dress up clothes. Every little girl's dream!

I took this picture for Emily. She would have loved them all and I wish I could have bought her one of everything!

Eventually we made it back to our hotel in order to change and freshen up for dinner and Wicked!

Here we are in our hotel lobby. It's a terrible picture but you get more of an idea of our swanky hotel. The lobby was full of people at the time enjoying the evening reception. We just dropped in to take a picture and headed out.

Our dinner reservations were at Carmine's. I had been there before and loved it so I knew it would be a good pre-theater dinner. It did not disappoint.

The food itself was so delicious. I loved every bite. It's all served family style so we ordered two entrees to share. They were huge.

We got Lasagna and one of the specials. It was breaded chicken with spinach, cheese, and potatoes. Oh. My. Word.

Our reservation was early enough that we had time to walk through Times Square before we needed to be at the theater. We stopped at a few of the street vendors and then dropped our things off at our hotel. That was another great thing about staying somewhere centrally located. It was always easy to stop by our room for a little while if we needed to.

We arrived at the theater to see Wicked early so we had to wait a while. I was so excited to see it that I wasn't very patient! We took pictures to help the time pass.

The doors opened soon enough and we were ushered to our seats. We had wonderful seats! We could see the actors sweat we were so close. :) I love getting seated and having time to look through my Playbill. I enjoy reading about where all the actors have performed in the past.

The stage and curtain.

More of the stage. These stairs were right and front of us and when the actors would do lines from them it felt like we were on stage with them. They were so close!

Let me just say that Wicked is WONDERFUL!!! I'm so glad I was able to see it in NYC! I loved every second of it and would love to see it again and again! After the show we walked through Times Square some more and just enjoyed being out. It was such a nice night we hated to go back to the hotel even though we were exhausted.

We made a stop in the M & M store. We actually stopped in this place several times during our stay in NYC. It was air conditioned and it had bathrooms.

We also went to the Hershey store. It was so crowded (and they didn't have restrooms) so we didn't linger long.

We were there long enough for me to get a drink.

I wanted to be sure we took pictures at night in Times Square. Little did we know less than 24 hours later we wouldn't be allowed to stand in Times Square and take pictures.

After taking pictures we decided it was time to head back to the hotel. We had a big day planned for Saturday and it started early!

Day 3 to come...