
Day One (Sunday)
Well, after returning from NYC at the end of June, another business travel opportunity came about which required me to come back sooner than expected. To those of you who followed my journey last month, I brought Nancy at the time, along with Ethan and Madison.
As always, I like taking the red eye flight from Los Angeles to New York. And that’s exactly what we did. We left LA around 9pm, and arrived in NY at 5am (local time). We decided take a cab from JFK to Midtown West. For the next 5 days, the Marriott Manhattan/Chelsea was going to be our home. As you can imagine, we got to our hotel very early in the morning around 6am. Since it was that early, there was no available room for us to use at that time. We expected that. We rested for a bit in the lobby, took care of a few online activities, and started our day around 7am. Again, this, to me, is the reason why I like flying the red eye. I can get my day started early.
Just a few short minutes from the hotel is Bagel Maven. We didn’t want to eat a heavy breakfast, so we opted to share a toasted poppy seed bagel with lox, walnut raisin cream cheese, red onions, and tomatoes. The cream cheese gave a nice hint of sweetness to this bagel. I like trying a new bagel place whenever I visit the city. While this may not be the best bagel I’ve had, it suited us just fine.
There were 3 of them who gladly moved back to their rightful position, while the other 2 or 3 insisted they were part of the earlier group. By the time Box Office opened, everyone in front of us got tickets to Beautiful (Standing Room Only). When it was our turn to purchase tickets, there was only 1 (one) SRO ticket ($40) and the next choice was to buy a premium seat for $299. We needed 2 tickets and did not want to buy one and have the other person watch something else. Nancy and I wanted to watch the show together. At this point, there was nothing else we could do other than go with our Plan B – join the rush or lotteries for the other shows. It was upsetting, but at that point, what else could we have done….so Plan B it was!!!
We headed over to If/Then (starring Idina Menzel) for a chance at their lottery, however, our names didn’t get picked, but we had an option to buy $40 full view orchestra seats. I had already watched If/Then back in the winter time, but not Nancy. So back to Plan B or C, she asked me to check the tickets for Once (fortunately the theatre was just 1 block away). When I got there, they were selling discounted rush seats (side orchestra) and we decided to go with Once so it’s a “new” show for both of us. Yes!!! We watched Once, and enjoyed the simplicity of the show. It was not the typical Broadway flashy show, but if focused more on the songs, the characters and the story.

most recent trip to
NY, so we went ahead and gave it a try. We ate the most fabulous Avocado Massaman Curry with chicken, potatoes, onions. It was soooo good, flavorful, perfect blend of Thai spices. The portions were generous, it was big enough for us to share….I’ll definitely be back.

Artichoke Basille’s Pizza


Walking off some of the food crawl calories – The Highline


Well the other reason why I wanted to venture out towards Chelsea Market was because of its proximity to The Highline. The High Line is a public park built on a historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side. It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to West 34th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues.This was another first for me and Nancy. While we didn’t walk the entire Highline, we walked from 14th Street all the way down to Gansevoort (Meatpacking District). While it may not be the longest walk, I had to give ourselves some credit. After all, we’ve been exploring the city after coming straight from the airport, and we flew all-night. After making it to Gansevoort, we decided it was time to go back to our hotel and get our much needed rest.
It was a work day for me today so all the exploration took place tonight after work. Nancy did her exploration of the city on her own we decided to meet in Greenwich Village. She actually had a late start since she didn’t have to get up early. She paced herself and enjoyed the city on her own. For lunch, she went to Ramen Thukpa as recommended by a local blogger….we love ramen.





Directly after the show, we headed over to Spring Street (Nolita area, I think), and had rice pudding from Rice to Riches. We shared 3 different flavors….rum raisin with mixed nuts, tiramisu, and rocky road. I enjoyed rum raisin the best!!! Although it was rice, it didn’t feel heavy. It felt good to cap off our evening with this yummy dessert.

An Extraordinary BEAUTIFUL Show

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Beautiful bald man 🙂 |
The SRO section is located at the very top, rear mezzanine, while it was all the way at the top, it was fine. The Sondheim Theatre is a new theatre, and you get a pretty good angle looking down from that section. Because it’s SRO, your only other chance to “sitting” is if no one shows up in any of the sections. But the chances are soooo slim. The show was sold out. There is no denying that we wanted to sit but heck, we’re finally watching Beautiful.
As the show progressed, the latecomers occupied any empty seat, so there was no chance for us to grab any empty seat in the Mezzanine Section. We have no idea what seats were empty in the orchestra section since we weren’t in that section.
At the end of Act One, one of the usherettes came to see us and said, I have good news for you. She gave us a piece of paper. We were given ORCHESTRA SEATS for Act Two. Turned out that there were no-shows in the orchestra section!!! So there, we ended sitting in a $300 section during Act Two!!!! Thank you, Stephen Sondheim theatre staff!!!!
A Beautiful Late-night Dinner
We left the stage door sometime around 10pm and decided to head back close to our hotel near Herald Square. We went to Kunjip restaurant and had some great Korean Bulgogi Bibimbap and Soon Tofu….aaaaahhhh all’s well today!!!