NEW YORK {Day 2}

We slept in and took our time getting out Saturday morning, but we had a hop-on-hop off tour scheduled.  If you've never been to New York, I would really recommend doing something like this because you get to see so much of the city in a short amount of time.  Basically, you can get off at the stops you wish and when you are ready to move on down the line you go back to the bus stop and hop on a different bus.  It's a crap shoot with the guides on the buses, but ours on each bus ended up being really good!  We took the downtown tour because we wanted to go to Ground Zero.

This is us on the bus!  It was really windy that day so I was cold!!!  Our first hop off was at Madison Square Park.  It was coincidence that we were there during the weeks they were having an outside market!  The park itself sits in the shadow of the Flatiron Building.  We ate lunch here from two different spots...Pies 'n' Thighs and Roberta's.  We had a homemade chicken pot pie and a brick oven pizza.  Lee usually hates to share food, but he was feelin' all romantic like so he agreed.  The picture below shows one of the vendors cooking on the street!  Taxi's and cars were literally zooming down the road right beside him!!! 

 Back on the bus, Lee and I decided that if we ever move to New York, we would live in Greenwich Village and go to this church!  ha!

 The fence below is covered with tiles created by New York school children.  All of the tiles will be moved to the memorial site when it's complete...it was simple and breathtaking.

And for all the Sex and The City fans....it's CARRIE'S HOUSE!!!!!

 The AVON Breast Cancer walk was going on the weekend we were there...

 Ground Zero.  What can you say?  Really not a lot to "see", but strange to see that much sky in NYC.  And people are just quiet there.  The picture of the cemetery was probably one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken.  That church is right across the street from Ground Zero... if you look hard enough you can see the cranes in the background. 

 And for all the REAL  Housewives, it's Zarin Fabrics!  Didn't get to go in to look for Jill....

 I wanted to shop here...is that not the cutest little grocery? 

We hopped off the tour for good at Rockafellar Center because we were going on the NBC Studio Tour at four that afternoon.  We had a little time to kill, so we walked all the way up Fifth Avenue to FAO Schwarz to get the boys a little something.  We walked around a little while and stumbled on The BIG Piano!  They must have performances throughout the day...we were just  lucky! Oh, and we ended up buying the boys an FAO Schwarz teddy bear! 

We were not allowed to take any pictures during the NBC Studio tour, so being the rule follower I am, I didn't try it!  It was neat, but I don't think we'd do it again.  We got to see the sets of The Dr. OZ Show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Saturday Night Live.  All are MUCH smaller in person than on TV!  I totally forgot to tell you about the randomness that happened to us on Friday!  We tried to do the NBC tour on Friday, but the tickets were gone for the day.  As we were leaving, we were approached by a Jimmy Fallon intern and given tickets to Jimmy's {I act like I know him:)} monologue rehearsal!  The only downside was that we had to wait around for a while in a hot little hallway with 50 strangers.  Once on set, we sat down in the audience and out came Jimmy Fallon.  His writer's sat beside his desk in the guest chairs and he read his jokes for that night off of a piece of paper!  He marked the jokes we laughed at and struck through the ones he didn't like.  Because it was a Friday night he also did his 'thank you note' segment...that was a hoot!  We fell asleep trying to wait on it to come on that night so I'll have to Hulu it!  

On the way back to the hotel after NBC, we stopped by Magnolia Bakery and STOOD IN LINE to buy cupcakes!  I bought two red velvet and a breast cancer awareness {vanilla cake and icing}!  They were good, but I gotta say it.  I like our Cupcake cupcakes better!  It think it was the icing...I like A LOT of icing!    

We headed back to the hotel to watch the game and stopped to buy a six pack on the way...

a $16 six pack!!!  We were cracking up!  Cupcakes and Miller Lite!  This was Lee during the game.  Biting his lip....and this was me, under the covers messing with my camera!  After the game, we walked down the street to a little Italian place to eat and we called it a night!