Finally, NYC photos

(if you just click to get it started, the slideshow will begin and advance itself.)

Ok!!! Finally, here is a slideshow of my trip to NCY with my beautiful mom. These are only some of the photos; now that I know how to do this, I'll post more soon. Picnik and Flickr came through for me. Photobucket: YOU SUCK.

Anyway, our trip was so much fun, I can't even tell you. It started out a little sketchy. In fact, so many things went wrong that we started a list. But the thing is, each thing that went wrong ended up being resolved fairly painlessly. To wit:

Dark cloud:
Mom lost her boarding pass at the Las Vegas airport and did not realize this until we were BOARDING. Silver lining: They quickly and easily reprinted one for her and we got on the plane.

Dark cloud:
We arrived at the Long Island airport to POURING RAIN and our driver was nowhere to be found. When I called to check, I was told at first that there was no record of a reservation. We were exhausted and overwhelmed and we'd been travelling for over 12 hours with nothing but some peanuts and a Cinnabon to eat. Silver lining: Luckily I had printed the emails exchanged between me and the car service and they sent a car right away. Our driver was charming, interesting, and gave us great advice on what to do and what not to do in the city.

Dark cloud:
We arrived at the hotel, only to be told that our reservation had been cancelled. Here we were in a city we didn't know at all; it was pouring rain and we wouldn't even have known where to begin looking for another hotel. Silver lining: The front desk realized that the cancellation was THEIR error and they had a room available. It was similar in size to a cruise-ship room, but hey, it had beds and at that point, that's all we cared about.

Dark cloud:
Our plan on Friday was to spend the day exploring Rockefeller Center, including a tour of the NBC studios. We waited in line and our group filed into the auditorium for a short movie clip. But first, they had to check everone's tickets because they somehow had an extra person or two. So one girl went around with a flashlight checking all our tickets to make sure we were supposed to be part of the 11:00 group. Apparently, 1 or 2 extra people were NOT acceptable. Then, they had to check agian. Then they checked a third time and then one of them had to go confer with the manager. We are all really grumbling, ready to get started and irritated that whoever was the intruder didn't just admit to it. Finally, she came back in and said "Ok, apparently someone here is actually booked for Friday December 19th. I need you all to look at your tickets again." Yep, you guessed it. Silver lining: They were able to get us in on the next group. And as we were touring the SNL studio, we saw Seth Myers.

Oh, and this is my favorite: On the Metro on the way back to the hotel from Rockefeller Plaza, it was Friday night and the subways were just packed. At each stop, a few people would get off but ten times more would try to cram on. The conductor kept saying "Do NOT block the doors. You can't stand in the doorway." And then at the next stop the same thing would happen: "Do NOT block the doors. If you can't fit onto this train, there is another one right behind us." Of course, no one paid any attention to him at all and continued to cram their way in and block the doors. Finally, the conductor got so mad "Because you people aren't listening to me and it's causing delays" he decided to SKIP OUR STOP. He just announced that there wasn't going to be a stop at 28th street and that the next stop would the 14th st. That would mean a 14 block walk, in the dark, back to our hotel and I would have ended up carrying mom on my back I think. Lucky for us a kind local woman recognized our "tourist-in-headlights" look and said "I am going to 28th street too; we'll just get off and get on the next train". Which we did and that conductor was kind enough to STOP AT THE DESIGNATED METRO STOPS and so we were able to pop up right in front of our hotel as planned.

The rest of the weekend went relatively smoothly. We toured the city and saw the sights and I became a pro at hailing cabs and we got to see Kim and it was really an all-around fabulous trip that both mom and I will remember forever.

I love NY. And my mom is pretty cool too.