Our Minimoon in NYC

Well, we received our wedding photos last week [all 806 of them], so I'm having so much fun choosing favorites [down to 350!] and hope to share many of them soon.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share a little about the minimoon we went on after our wedding.  Even when we still lived in Connecticut, we knew that we wouldn't be able to go on a honeymoon right away because September is right in the middle of my busy fall season.  We also thought it would be super weird to get married on Saturday and just go back to work, as if nothing had happened, on Monday.  Our wedding also coincided with the beginning of Jeter's last home stand at Yankee Stadium, so, you do the math.  Minimoon planned!  When we moved to South Carolina, we knew that Mike would drive the moving truck down in August, we would fly up and back for my shower, and we would fly up and drive his '97 BMW back down afterwards.  It worked out perfectly.  We stayed at the hotel with all of our friends and family in Massachusetts on Saturday, spent Sunday with Mike's dad, and drove down to NYC Sunday night and stayed until Tuesday when we would keep driving to South Carolina.  Here's what we did:
We stayed in the Bronx at the Bronx Opera House Hotel.  On Monday morning, we took the Subway to Manhattan and got off in Times Square.  Our goal was to spend the day in Central Park.  We obviously grabbed New York bagels on our walk to the park.

We entered the park at Columbus Circle and started exploring.

The trails through The Ramble were so much fun.

Stop at Belvedere Castle

Next thing we knew it, we were halfway across the Reservoir and had walked 50 blocks [plus all of the winding through the park].  At this point, we figured we had to go the rest of the way through the park.

Conservatory Gardens and a thumbs up when we made it out on 110th Street.

As if that wasn't enough walking, we walked a few more blocks to the Subway and took it back down to the southside of the park to go to a restaurant I'd been talking about for at least a year.  Has anyone ever heard of "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on Food Network?  Well, like a year ago, Emeril talked about the best veal parmesan he ever ate at this restaurant Il Vagabondo in NYC, so I needed to go and try it.  Mike got the manicotti, and since it was 2:30 [we spent 5 hours walking through the park], we were the only ones in the restaurant.  Everything was SO GOOD.

As we walked about to the Subway station, we ran into the Roosevelt Island Tram, so we decided to ride that across... and were the annoying tourists with cameras.

We walked another 15 or so blocks each way down to Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, and it was just beautiful.

The Sprinkles ATM on our way back to the Subway was a necessary stop.

Last, but not least, was the Yankees game.  They beat the Orioles 5-0 and Jeter had 3 RBIs.

And last but not least, it wouldn't be a Meg and Mike trip if we didn't have some type of car trouble.  On Sunday when we arrived, we learned that our hotel had four parking spots for what they called "secure parking."  Yes, four.  Well, I was not going to let that little car sit in a surface lot with our wedding gifts in it for 2 nights.  So, they let us pull into the alley where the secure spots were to unload.  After unpacking everything and bringing it up to our hotel room, we came back down to move the car and found it smoking, sitting in a puddle of its own coolant.  Great.  A radiator hose split, so there was no way we were going to be able to move it.  Luckily for us, there was a repair shop across the street, but because it was 9 pm, it was obviously closed.  They let us keep the car parked on the side of the secure parking overnight, then in the morning, Mike rolled it across the street to the auto mechanic.  Luckily, it was done by Tuesday morning when we had to leave, but seriously, could anything else go wrong?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, something else did go wrong and we got a flat in Virginia... And they lived happily ever after.