30th Birthday trip. Day #2 NYC!

Waking up and being 30 years old for the first time isn't too bad when you're in New York City! I was greeted by Marcus who brought me my favorite coffee from Starbucks as well as a Chocolate chunk cookie. Here's a picture of me enjoying it while laying in the bed watching the Early Show.

Life is good!

Next we had room service deliver breakfast to our room. They set up a table with fresh flowers, amazing food, and coffee. We enjoyed eating together and looking out our window at the busy city below.

After breakfast we headed out for Top of the Rock, which was great. It’s the top of the Rockefeller Center building and gives you a 360 degree view of the city. We didn’t have to wait in line at all and went right up. I’ve done the Empire State building before and have to say that I enjoyed this more. It was beautiful up there and not nearly as crowded as the ESB was when we went a few years ago. Here are some pictures…

After Top of the Rock we hailed a cab and took it to Little Italy where we met our tour guide, Scott. Scott runs a company called Scott’s Pizza Tours (www.scottspizzatours.com) where he does walking or bus-riding tours of the best pizzerias in NYC. This guy is great! He knows all about pizza, how it’s made, where to find the best pizza, and he is highly entertaining! We spent three hours walking around Little Italy and eating some amazing pizza!

Waiting for our tour to leave...This was before realizing that I had bought tickets for the following Wednesday accidentally. Scott let us go along anyway.

Eating fresh made mozzarella

The Contents of our pizza tour goody bag :)

Lombardi's pizza- seriously the best I've ever had. Voted Best Pizza on the Planet according to a Zagat survey

Lombardi's coal burning pizza oven

Scott had the restaurant give me this for my birthday

and then led everyone in singing to me. So nice!

The buildings there were BEAUTIFUL!

After our walking tour, we took the subway back to our hotel and decided to take a short nap before our evening out on the town. 

To celebrate my birthday, we had made reservations at The Capital City Grille. There are several of these in NYC, but we were at the one right near Radio City Music Hall. It was rated the #1 restaurant in NYC so we decided it must be good! Besides that, they offer a pre-theatre menu with three courses per person for only $40 which in New York is a GREAT deal!

If you know me very well, you know that this is not normally a way that I dress! We decided since we were having a big night out on the town to dress up a little. Although I felt a little 'out of my element', we had so much fun!

I don’t have any pictures from our meal or from the Cirque de Soleil show we went to see called Zarkana. The acrobatic tricks in this show were amazing, but we couldn’t follow the story line whatsoever. It was at Radio City Music Hall and the props and staging were unbelievable!

After our show we walked to Juniors to get some Cheesecake and then went back to our hotel to enjoy it. We stayed up late that night talking and enjoying the city. 

Tomorrow- Day #3!