theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Travel | New York

  • found: statue of liberty

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  • new york city, pt. 2

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  • 9-11 memorial

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  • travel: new york city

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  • travel: citizens committee for new york city gala

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  • coming home

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    coming home

  • anniversary

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    we’re actually in new york city to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary, which we should have done last year, but we sort of forgot.

    for those of us who know us best, forgetting our anniversary is something we do very very well — and has resulted in us celebrating our October wedding each year in December.

    this year we celebrated at Les Halles (for the second time in three years) and Bemelmans Bar, which was named in honor of Ludwig Bemelmans the creator of the classic Madeline children’s books who hand painted the scenes that cover the whole interior.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    anniversary

  • shopping in new york

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    shopping in new york

  • central park

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    we walked around for about 45 minutes in the section of central park call “the rambles.” besides being a hot-bed of GLBT free love in the 70’s, it’s also where the lady sparkler and I got engaged.

    unfortunately, that was in the days before foursquare, so we have no earthly idea where i actually proposed. it was on one of the trails, at the top of a small hill, with a tree that was growing horizontal from the elements. but turns out there are a lot of trees in central park (who knew?!?) and some of them are even growing horizontally on the top of hills.

    oh, well. figuring out where it happened gives us a reason to keep coming back.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    central park

  • travel: new york city

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    new york. and, lady sparkler’s and my first overnight trip without the kids, well, ever. we miss them terribly but, at the same time, they’re in good hands (thanks gram and gpa!) and it’s nice remembering what it’s like walking around a city without being hunched over, arguing that you have to hold hands when you cross the street.
    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    travel: new york city

  • last photo in new york

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    We’re on the train back to the District, and i’ve got a couple random thoughts clattering around my head:

    • New York is about as kid friendly as they come — Outside of the obvious fears about wandering off and getting hit by a Taxi the city was great.  People on the sidewalk gave a friendly smile, cabbies were super patient, and waiters and hotel staff bended over backwards.
    • The Affinia Dumont was terriffic — We stayed at a $200/night hotel at with more square footage than most DC hotels, and it came with two beds and a kitchen.  Totally clean, modern.  Great staff, serviceable bar — what more could you ask for?
    • Avoid the touristy stuff, or go at off hours — We had more fun in our neighborhood (Murray Hill/Grammercy Park) than we did the area around Times Square.  We enjoyed the Bryant Park tree (with 12 locals) more than Rockefeller Center (with 2.6 million people from New Jersey.
    • Kids are trainable — In 12 hours, Sparklet had figured out that she needed to stay a little closer to mommy and daddy than usual, and that we’d lose our gourds if she didn’t.  Of course, she also figured out that we really WANTED to buy her something in each toy store we visited, and was all too happy to help pick stuff out.
    • i need skates and ice skating lessons — i spent over two hours at two different skating rinks this weekend, and didn’t step on to the ice. of course, my biggest problem is the size of my feet (size 14 or 15 shoes), but followed closely behind by a complete lack of coordination on slippery surfaces. i’ve got to find a way to make this work.
    • iPads are awesome, terrible things — We did 2 two-plus hour train rides, and between the books, toys and iPad, the only time she complained was when her kiddie headphones fell off her ears.  I really don’t know if I’m happy or sad about this, but it works regardless of my vague uneasiness.

    I really do love this town — especially at Christmas — but I’m a little nervous we won’t be back for a while. 

    The second baby (“thing two”) fundamentally shifts us towards a zone defense, and so the next big vacation might be in more of a structured environment — which is probably code for either a cruise, a theme park, or a large national park with all its pointy rocks wrapped in foam rubber.

    Pretty sure giving into the need for structure isn’t a good thing, but could just be part of growing up. Or, at the least, settling. Or, at least, refusing to give in an buy a leash.

  • out: walk along fifth avenue

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: walk along fifth avenue

  • eats: murray hill diner

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    breakfast at murray hill diner, lexington avenue and 33rd street, new york, new york.

  • found: scarf

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    dinner at blue smoke, 27th street between park and lex, new york, new york.

  • found: angry sock puppet

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    lunch at Blockheads, 34th and 3rd ave, new york, new york.

  • out: central park

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: hecksher playground, central park, new york, new york

  • out: fao schwartz

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: fao schwartz, new york, new york

  • eats: vic’s bagel bar

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    breakfast at vic’s bagel bar, 37th and 3rd, new york, new york.

  • eats: brasserie les halles

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    i’m slightly embarrassed to say that i’m becoming a bit of an Anthony Bourdain fan-boy.

    i’ve read several of his books (including his best known, Kitchen Confidential), his travel channel show “no reservations” is the only food show that i watch with any regularity, and we’ve just gotten hooked on his new show, “the layover”.

    not sure exactly where the allure has come from, but he’s my kind of chef — his food is relatively simple fare, and he is a chef from a time before Martha Stewart and Williams Sonoma conspired to ruin the public’s notion of the equipment required to cook and consume food “properly.”

    and he doesn’t say the word “bam!” after adding each ingredient.

    so, it was with GREAT trepidation that i booked a table for two at his Park Avenue eatery, Brasserie Les Halles. i was scared to death that it would suck, that it would be as charming as a Las Vegas themed mega-restaurant, and that i would be outed as a fan-boy to boot.

    i had no reason for the fear or the loathing — the food was outstanding, down to the smallest touches.

    we had to push the bread to the opposite side of the table, so we wouldn’t ruin dinner. the mussels had a sauce (Portuguese) that quickly caused us to break out the bread again in reckless disregard for the swelling of our stomachs. we had so many “okay, this is the last frite and i mean it” that we lost count.

    and all that was before dinner arrived.

    i had a plate of pork big enough to make a man weep — smoked pork loin, veal sausage, frankfurter, smoked bacon, boiled potatoes and sauerkraut. i don’t even like pork loin, and it was easily the best thing i’ve eaten in 10 years.

    it was legitimately outstanding, regardless of the reality television flashbacks.

    don’t get me wrong, we had our bits of celebrity worship — we were waited on by veteran waiter tim, we saw the back of long-time owner Philippe Lajaunie’s head, and executive chef Carlos Llaguno was behind the glass when we peaked through the kitchen window.

    the best bit was the restaurant itself was as unassuming as any you’ll find. if it seats 120 people, it’s not by much. decor doesn’t look like its been updated in 50 years. the floor was stuffed mostly by locals, or at least tourists who knew how to blend in. when we asked for a quiet table to celebrate our anniversary, we got (easily) the best table in the restaurant.

    and, the whole thing — two glasses of wine, one double sized appetizer, two entrees, two deserts, two coffees — was $120. i’ve paid twice as much in D.C., for half the meal.

    my existence as an anthony bourdain fan-boy continues on, unabated. a simple, dirty pleasure in a complex world of food and reality television.

    and i feel great.

  • eats: almond bar

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    brunch at almond bar, 22nd and broadway, new york, new york.

  • out: madison square park

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: madison square park

  • found: trains at toys ‘r us

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  • found: ornament

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    pret a manger, 49th and 6th avenue, new york, new york.

  • out: rockefeller center, take two

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    for the record, last night’s trip to rockefeller center didn’t go all that well.

    granted, we saw the tree — but it was so packed that the cab had to let us off three blocks away. pedestrians we’re walking down the center of 49th, because there was no room on the sidewalks, and cars couldn’t make it through the crosswalks anyway.

    turns out sunday mornings at 8:00 am are a little different.

    we could have bowled down 6th ave, and hit neither person nor automobile. we actually got to see the tree, and could have skated if one of us wasn’t either pregnant, or horribly unskilled, or two years old.

    oh, and the fact that it was 24 #$%@ing degress out probably helped, too.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: rockefeller center, take two

  • eats: the barking dog

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    Dinner at The Barking Dog, 34th and Lexington Ave, New York, New York.

  • out: grand central station

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: grand central station

  • out: rockefeller center

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  • out: walk to bryant park

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: walk to bryant park, new york, new york

  • eats: patsy’s pizzaria

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    lunch at patsy’s pizzaria, 34th and 3rd ave, new york, new york

  • travel: new york, new york

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    we’re on our way to new york city.

    it’s our first family vacation since exactly a year ago, when we were in Costa Rica for a friends wedding. We haven’t been in new york together, in an even longer time — not since five and half years ago when we got engaged.

    it’s also sparklet’s first train ride, which is great timing considering her recent obsession with all things choo-choo. speaking of obsessions:

    • she’s counting to five now — english and spanish. she needs props (nuts, crayons, figurines) but counts them off completely un-prompted.
    • she’s half potty trained now — about four days ago, mommy sat her down and told her that she’d get gummi bears for each time she uses the potty. within the first 2 hours, she had gone thrice, and it’s been mostly dry diapers ever since.
    • her vocabulary is growing — she’s definately in the identification phase, where she has to call out the make and color of every object she sees. Cute, but a bit of a liability when you’re hurtling down the highway and she’s screaming at you for each car, bus and taxi she sees.

    we’ll be here through Tuesday — my family used to come up to new york every winter for years and years, to see the decorations and the store windows, and we’ll be doing just about the same thing.

    it’ll be good.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    travel: new york, new york

  • how I met your mother: engagement, part 2

    (continued from part 1)

    this is the fifth in a series of letters to baby sparklet about how mommy and daddy met and woo-ed each other.

    immediately after the lady sparkler’s crazy Texas friends started haranguing her into haranguing me into marrying her, I thought to myself “you know, I do love her, and want to spend the rest of my life with her…”

    and so i decided to get a ring. that was December. I had the ring two weeks later.

    we were already talking about going to new York for my birthday (April) and it seemed like (at the time) my beloved’s marital haranguing might actually die down by then, at least long enough for me to propose uninterrupted.

    not so much.

    by February, i was sufficiently badgered to explain to her (in no uncertain terms) that from now on, each time she brought up engagement, i would move the “hypothetical” proposal back another month.

    by April, she had managed to add *fourteen* months to the engagement time line. so, while i hadn’t succeeded in her stifling the running of her mouth, i at least knew that a proposal was the farthest thing from her mind when we pulled into NYC’s Penn Station the second week of April.

    the same, however, couldn’t be said for me…

    I was a wreck, and constantly obsessed about the ring — where it was, and whether it had fallen out of the triple-bagged cocoon in which it was placed. to make matters worse, on the day i was going to propose (april 14th) it rained, and rained, and rained, and rained.

    i had already decided I couldn’t propose to the lady sparkler inside some silly, human-built structure because whatever we were inside could be torn down, or worse, turned into a starbucks.

    so, i decided i would do the deed in Central Park, which (obviously) wasn’t particularly rain-friendly, which meant that april 14th became april 15th, and engagement day became tax day.

    that afternoon, i marched my beloved around central park for over an hour, mostly because i couldn’t find a place to propose. i know it’s crazy, but there are a *lot* of people in new york — who knew? — and every single one of them seemed to be lounging around central park.

    before we left DC, i had asked my best friend from college (and future bridesmaid) if she had any suggestions about the whole engagement process. it turns out that her husband was such a mess when he proposed, that she was convinced (right up until she saw the ring) that he was dumping her.

    her solution? pull the ring out first.

    and, when we finally found a secluded spot, i did just that. the lady sparkler was resting for a moment on a mostly horizontal tree, when i pulled out the ring, and sat down beside her.

    she didn’t hear a single thing that i said. she was like the crow from the secret of n.i.m.h., when he sees mrs. frisbee’s medallion and says: “ooooooooooo, SPARKLY!”

    interestingly enough, to this day, she has no idea what *she* said either. (for the record, it was: “oh. my. god. are you, like, serious?”)

    i have what i said written down somewhere, but it was exactly what you would expect: “love, blah, blah, blah, so happy, blah, blah, life together, blah blah.” she replied, “yes, yes. oh my god, yes.” which — i would surmise — is just about as good of a response as you can get.

    speaking of which, on our way out of central park we ran into the back of another boy proposing to another girl, and it looked like he had arranged for a photographer and her parents to join in the festivities.

    unfortunately, she looked abjectly horrified. yeeeesh. at least *we* lived happily ever after.

    PHOTO: tulips, new york, new york.

  • Photos: New York

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    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    Engagement Day

  • Engagement

    It happened some time around 3:30 on Saturday… I proposed to The Lady Sparkler while we were in New York City for a long weekend. The proposal itself took place in a part of Central Park overlooking the lake called the Ramble (see map).

    For the record, she did say yes… and part of the following day was spent purchasing a bridal planning book from Barnes and Noble, which I took to be a good, reinforcing sign.

    We are open to bets on when the wedding will be, and if the pool gets large enough, we promise to throw the pool and split the proceeds with the “winner.” Even money says that it won’t be in ANY spring (too miserably busy each and every year), so the smart gambler would be picking D.C. weekends in the autumn of 2007.

    Pictures coming soon from the trip to NYC, and maybe even the ring if we can find a way of doing it without looking completely superficial / gauche.