Baron's 30th Birthday

Hi friends! Once again, it's been months since I've sat down to put fingers to keyboard and filled you all in on what's been going on.  We've been enjoying springtime in Alabama and traveling a lot as well.  Baron's been busy with work and I've enjoyed being PRN as my job. I've been working two days a week (instead of the regular full time of three shifts per week) and honestly feel like I'm on vacation all the time. I didn't expect to notice such a difference in cutting back only one shift per week, but it certainly has been noticeable. I feel like I enjoy my job more when I'm there, and that's got to be better for my patients!

Last month we celebrated Baron's 30th birthday with a quick weekend trip to New York City. I visited NYC for the first time back in 2008 with my Mom for a girls trip.  Baron had also been to NYC once before, back when he had a book published at the ripe old age of twelve. You can still buy it for until two bucks from Barnes and Noble: History Takes a Wild Ride.  We were excited to make this trip together to celebrate his birthday, after all, you only turn thirty once!

After arriving in New York City at around one o'clock and taking a quintessential, terrifying cab ride from the airport to Times Square we were starving. We decided to stop at the first place that looked decent and landed at Virgil's Barbecue.  The service was terrible, literally had to stalk our waiter in order to pay our bill, the diet cokes were flat and the barbecue wasn't very good.  We both walked away with a lesson learned.  Barbecue doesn't get much better than in Alabama. Period. We won't make that mistake again :)

After our barbecue disappointment we headed to Central Park and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the huge park and just enjoying people watching. The weather was beautiful! We had dinner at Serendipity, where we surprisingly were able to walk in and be seated right away. Dinner was alright, but dessert was delicious!  We ordered a Salted Caramel Frozen Hot Chocolate, and it was so good.  We waddled our way home to our hotel, which did I mention was right smack dab in the middle of Times Square? We headed up to the thirty-something floor and didn't hear any of the craziness going on below us. I don't even remember laying down to go to sleep...Zzzzz!

The next day we enjoyed walking around Bryant Park in the morning. It's so fun to watch all the craziness of Times Square and surrounding areas at 8:00 AM on a Friday morning. There's just a constant buzz of excitement. From there we headed to Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Terminal, and ended the day at the U.S.S. Intrepid Museum. Cool stuff!

Tulips in Bryant Park

Baron doing a little shopping at Rockefeller Center

Grand Central Terminal

Planes aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid

On our second full day in NYC we decided to explore the rest of Central Park.  We enjoyed the beautiful weather again while we walked...and walked...and walked some more.  That park is huge! And beautiful! We had fun watching all the locals enjoy the beautiful park in the big city on such a pretty Saturday. After exploring Central Park we walked back to our hotel stopping along the way for some photo ops, which included a Boston Terrier sighting! We also made a pit stop at Levain Bakery, where we ate the best chocolate chip cookie that we'd every had in our entire lives. Yes folks, it was that good. I'm trying to convince Baron to let me order some online, but I have a feeling that once it happens once, it will be just as bad as one click shopping on Amazon. Bad, very bad.  We ended the day by visiting the Top of the Rock attraction at Rockefeller Center, for some beautiful views of the city at night.

The last full day of our trip was jam packed.  Our feet were aching and we were exhausted so we decided to ride the subway to the first stop of our day.  We spent the morning exploring Chinatown and Little Italy. We got some Bubble Tea and had lunch at a cute little restaurant in Little Italy. It was so good! From there we headed to the World Trade Center Memorial Site and were able to see the new memorial that is in place as well as the Freedom Tower which is still under construction.  It was a very moving experience to be there and see the beautiful fountains. When I traveled there in 2008, they were still cleaning up the site and there was a lot of construction going on.  What a transformation to see what has been built at the site since then.

Next we headed to Wall Street and to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. We grabbed a snack at the Wafels & Dinges food truck and ate the most delicious waffle ever! We walked the Brooklyn Bridge which was nothing like you see in the movies. It was packed with walkers, runners, bikers, people pushing strollers, people taking pictures, people selling stuff, it was insane! We decided to turn back at the halfway point after almost being run over by a biker in the pedestrian lane. It was a little intense, but it was so neat to walk over such a famous bridge.

A bright spot of color on Wall Street

Baron and the Wall Street bull

We had such a great time in New York City, but we were both ready to come back to Sweet Home Alabama. Things just move a little too quickly for our taste in NYC, so we decided next time we go back to the Big Apple we'll stay a little bit away from Times Square and explore the lesser known areas of New York.

We actually just got back from Hawaii for our anniversary trip, hopefully it won't take me a month to get our pictures up on the blog! We'll see! Hope you all have a great rest of the week. Keep on truckin', it's almost Friday!