Well, as expected I only slept three hours, 11 pm-2 am because I was so excited. Kory never has any trouble sleeping EVER. We were ready for Mom and Dad to pick us up at 6 am without incident... Well, there was the small bump of Kory deciding he was going to leave his Big Bertha bag behind and use his medium sized bag... It was packed full, but not overweight. I started carrying it down the stairs and the strap started ripping... I think (hope!) that the bag can make it through the trip without further incident!
Security is always a breeze at the Madison airport and the Delta flight was smooth and quick to New York taking about an hour and 45 min. We had our bags and were in our Uber to our hotel at about 10:30 am.
We are staying at the Holiday Inn Lower East side because it is just a couple blocks away from Kory's niece and her husband, and I got a travel agent rate. It is perfectly adequate. A smallish room like I would expect in New York but recently updated and looking nice. Kory noticed that their shower tile is the same as what we put in our new new lower level bathroom last year... So we have the same style as a Holiday Inn decorator I guess?
We were debating what we wanted to do until our dinner and show plans. As Kory and I have discovered... we don't sit still on vacation. We like to be constantly moving and doing things.
(Side story: When I used to come to NYC with my sister Maggie or bestie David, we would always leave time in our schedule to enter show lotteries, see something crazy off Broadway or just do something else unplanned. This usually involved having to sit outside theaters to get standing room tickets, or showing up at Box Offices and asking how cheap we could get in. This has evolved into most shows having digital lotteries. I have won a couple in the past (Hamilton in Chicago!) but no such luck for the few I entered this time.)
I told Kory that one option would be to go enter the in-person lottery to "Once on This Island," a show that we saw perform on the Tony awards and that ended up winning "Best Revival of a Musical." He said, "Well we're here in New York, lets do it." So we took the subway up to the theater district. It took about a half hour hotel to theater. It is easy getting up there, but we found out it is more difficult coming back because of station closures for weekend maintenance. AND it is was about 90 degrees outside, so it was about a billion degrees in the stations.
We entered the lottery and both our names got picked. They had quite a few tickets, and the price was a higher than other lotteries I have entered ($59,) but that was still way better than the price we would have paid for the seats we ended up in, $189 fourth row seats.
We ate a quick lunch on the patio at Mother Burger because we hadn't eaten anything the whole day yet. It was delicious (I am sure almost anything would have been,) but the real highlight was the "Red Flower," our half frozen Sangria, half frozen Mimosa drink.
We made our way back to the show, and let me tell ya, it was AMAZING. I will remember it forever. It was a theater in the round, the center was set up mostly with sandy ground (that the first row was sitting in!) And there was an entrance/exit for the performers splashing through a water area. The story was kind of like a Disney story of the girl from the poor part of the island falling in love with a boy from the rich side. The gods save her after an accident and she asks them to save the boy later in the story. It was very original, the music was fantastic, the staging was inventive and the performers were excellent. I am so so happy that we had an opportunity to experience this show. Last thing I will mention is that there is a goat in the show! A real GOAT! Never have seen that before.
After the matinee, we got back to our hotel by the circuitous Subway route, freshened up and went to meet up with Kory's niece and husband. They have an awesome apartment and we went up and drank wine and looked at the views from their roof top terrace. Then we headed out to dinner in little Italy.
They had made reservations at Paesanos, which was funny because of how close in name it is to Paisan's in Madison. This one had been around a little bit longer since 1911. It was perfect to have dinner in that quaint little place. The food, wine and company were all great.
I had to have Cannoli from a bakery selling them on the street because it is my favorite desert ever... Nom Nom Nom! Then we got an Uber that took about 45 min to get us back to the theater area and the Mean Girls Musical.
Anyone around my age has seen the Tina Fey Mean Girls movie... and it is in constant TBS rotation now. It was so so so fun going with Kory's niece for her first Broadway show. She LOVES Mean Girls and the show was so funny. We had great seats in the front row of the mezzanine and our view of the screens and performers couldn't have been better. This is not high art here... It is just a super fun, super high energy show with excellent young performers. And the entire original cast was there, so that is fun when I can go back and listen to the songs I like on the cast recording and know that is who I saw in person.
After the show we took another long Uber ride all over the place to get back to the hotel and CRASH. I feel like we have been here for a couple days already... but it had only been an action packed 13 hours. If the first day is any indication of how this vacation is going to progress, I am ecstatic! Now off for another day of adventure and a day of Harry Potter!
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