Monday, January 31, 2011

Singing in New York City

Our last night in New York was a doozy!!
Sonja our IT manager whom we will be traveling to Italy with in March took Holly and I for a nice dinner at this great restaurant down the road from the office called CRAB CITY!

We ordered a bottle of wine, Large Lump Blue Crab Crab cakes for starter, Fettuccine with Lobster and Alaskan King Crab legs!
They even Gave us these funny little bibs!!
Sonja and Holly
After dinner we headed out to hail a taxi cab..which we been very lucky at catching cabs this trip.
Holly said we Must go out and have a NY Cosmo and off we went venturing the streets for s Dive bar around town.
We found a little Dive called Muldoon's and stumbled in with our very small wine buzz from dinner. Holly ordered 2 grey goose Cosmos and we sat at the bar savoring the most perfect Cosmo I ever had and it better be for the extremely high price tag they had! I noticed it happen to be karaoke night at the bar so I looked over at Holly and Said YES we are SOOOOOO singing karaoke tonight!!!
Holly was hesitant at first but soon she was right up there belting it out!
She was singing Between the moon and New York City! Then we both sang Stray Cat Strut
and of course..had to do New York New York by Sinatra..yeah I know so typical of a New York Tourists.
We soon made a bunch of friends in the bar and ALL of us ..I think there was about 8 of us--just Sang to our hearts content.
The final song they choose for us to do since everyone knew Holly and I were from California and Not new Yorkers like the rest of them was California Dreamin...yeap...it was the start to a night on the town!

Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Corporate Office

So I have blogged about some of the things in New York we did but the truth is most of the stuff we did out there was work..so this blog is dedicated to all the time spent working.

This is our office building. Our company is all on the 4th floor! I really wish I took photos of inside the lobby where you get on the elevators..it was all marble and the ceiling was painted with cherubs like a old cathedral.
Tons of old buildings around us

I especially loved this old church
When you get to our floor this is the first thing that greets you.
Looking out the window of the office I was working out of
The conference room
The IT managers office we were working in
The sea of cubicles in the office! It was fun working with the co workers face to face for once!

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Food food glorious food

After our first work day in the office in New York..The VP told our logistics manager to take Holly and I out to one of their favorite places to go eat called Naples 45 for dinner.. there are a few locations ..one even in Downtown Disney in Anaheim here in CA!
They had a couple beers to drink and I had Some bubbly (my new favorite beverage these days)
For our appetizers we each picked one and shared..I picked the pesto Gnocchi, Holly picked the fresh Mozzarella with Tomato and basil and Seviye picked the calamari ( which I never had before but did make the attempt to try it for the first time in New york and let me say..NOT A FAN)
We decided on 3 entrees too..I picked the striped Bass with clams in a tomato veggie broth ( EXCELLENT)

Seviye picked a hand tossed 4 cheese pizza (DELISH) and Holly a Risotto ( I forget what kind but is was also very good)...It was a fantastic meal..I cannot wait to take Gabe to the one at Downtown Disney...Hopefully it will be just as good!
OOh and every morning we had free Continental breakfast at the restaurant below our hotel..It contains bowl of fresh fruit, toast with little jam jars, assorted pastries, coffee and OJ...A great way to start the morning!

Friday, January 28, 2011

Times Square

Once the bus dropped Holly and I off we walked over to Times Square and hung out for awhile
I swear if you just put a colorful roof over me it would look almost identical to Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas!
It was Monday night so it was not too crowded
They had this cool big TV over Forever 21 store and I guess throughout Times Square were hidden cameras filming the people on the street...Can you find Holly and I???
How about now??
on the big screen a huge person would show up and interact with the crowd ..the girl would pick up a image of a person on the street and the background would change into a desert with a camel walking through it and she would place the people on the camel and wave good bye to them..it was funny..we actually hung out here for a while and watched it! she looks like she is about to sit on us!!
It was soo cold out we decided to head back to our hotel room and get a goods night sleep for our first day of work. Our hotel was right next to the Chrysler Building.
I would have to say for the record...This night was the coldest night of all our stay in New York!



Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Back on The Bus

After walking around a bit in the financial district aka Wall Street and looking around we came across this very old cemetery...it is from the revolutionary war.
We were thinking when we first saw it that it is where all the bodies fell when the stock market crashed considering the American Stock Exchange building is right behind it.
Cool old Church!
I never seen a tombstone so old in my life!..Died 1782!
We were trying to figure out who these faces were..Holly said maybe they were the Knights of the round table...I thought they look like the dudes on the bicycle playing cards...especially the face on the far left...doesn't look like the Jack of clubs!!




Back at Battery Park after getting back on the bus we waited while more people joined us on the bus...we kept seeing lots of New York Rats running all around the park running into little self made igloos..they were cute..not to big and ratty quite yet.
I was FREEEEZING waiting on the top of that bus to start moving!
We drove by the Staten Island Ferry
Got a glimpse of Brooklyn
Got a glimpse of some great old ships
Of course the goood ol Brooklyn bridge
Drove through Chinatown...we just thought this Buddhist temple/99cent store was pretty unusual.
This China man was working on his scooter in the freezing weather..I guess he really had somewhere to be!
Soon leaving out of Chinatown the bus really just started hauling butt back to Times Square to end the tours of the evening.
So at this point between the bus trying to get back and my now completely frozen body everything just became a blur
I love how the city just lights up after Dusk
the trees were still filled with lights as well...I don't know if they were left over from the Holidays or if they are always just like this.
Back at Times Square which concludes the Bus Tour. I am so glad we did it..we really got to cram in as much sight seeing as I think we could have in one day!
I would have to say if you ever in New York and really want to learn some great history and fun facts and see all the major landmarks of New York..you Must go on the bus tour!
We unfortunately could not use our tour passes to the fullest..your pass is good for 48 hours and it includes besides the Downtown tour which all my pictures were of..it includes a Brooklyn Tour, Harlem,Central Park, Uptown and so much more. Not to forget to mention a ferry ride as well.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

With Liberty and Justice for all

We took a break from our NY bus tour and hopped off at battery Park to view the Statue of Liberty and to just really get out and stretch our legs too.

Battery Park was filled with snow and it was colder there then anywhere else in Manhattan because we were so close to the water. There was a eternal flame going on in the park next to this sculpture..if you click on the picture you can probably read what it says...
This is the sculpture..does not look so bad on the photo but in person there was big holes blown throughout it and tons of birds living in it.
We walked over to the water and starting yelling at these Gulls to go to Cali where it is warm..then I realized ..oh these are Arctic seagulls. Very pretty.
I wish we had the time to go on the boat over to go inside the Statue of liberty but the bus tours were going to end soon.
Close up
Not really sure what this is...
This is what I was standing in...we did see a lot of yellow snow too in Battery Park...I would like to assume it is from dogs....
No were not in Moscow..Holly took a picture of me standing in this same spot on her camera
We walked over to ground Zero...it is mainly just all construction sites.
The new tower being built
Everything was gated so this is about as close as we could get
This was on the building across the street
Paying homage to all the firefighters that lost their lives in 911.
There was only a few people there
It was pretty sad being there in that spot just took me back to that unforgettable horrible day.
There was very little to see here at Ground Zero.