Tuesday August 22 was a day of firsts for me and it was amazing! John had gotten us tickets to see a show on Broadway (my first Broadway show actually in NYC!) so we decided to go in a little early and see a little bit of the city and grab dinner before heading to the theater.
We drove out of our park and right into the parking lot for the train station. We boarded the train in Croton-on-Hudson (my first New York train ride!) and rode into the city around 3pm. The ride was really nice and much more comfortable than I expected. We had beautiful views of the Hudson River all the way into the city. Our train made a few stops at some of the small towns along the way and once we were in the city we made stops at Yankee Stadium and in Harlem before pulling into Grand Central.
I had seen Grand Central Terminal in several television shows and movies but I was not prepared for how beautiful and how HUGE it is! I told myself the whole way in on the train not to act like a dumb tourist and stand there staring up at the sky. I followed my own instructions for approximately 5 minutes after arrival. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one in complete awe.
We stepped out into the city itself and started making our way toward the theater. We walked past the New York Public Library and couldn’t resist going inside. I was hoping we would see the cool librarian ghost from the original Ghostbusters movie but no such luck. It was still a really pretty building, though, and I was glad that we stopped.
We walked a bit further and found a restaurant that didn’t look too busy that served burgers and fries and had plenty of open tables so we stopped in. It was while we were waiting for our food to arrive that I realized we were in Times Square. Our dinner was good and relatively cheap and we were quickly in our way again.
We did a little people watching on the way to the theater but we arrived a little early, still. Thankfully, we found a Mid-Town Comics location just a block from the theater so we went in for a look around. I ended up picking up a few comics for my Firefly collection and a Firefly Cookbook with recipes based on foods from the television show.
After shopping, it was time for the show! We walked over to the theater and got in line. I had no idea where our seats were or even what the show was about as John had handled everything. I was delighted to find that we were sitting in the front row of the balcony on the left hand side of the center section. In other words – AMAZING SEATS!
As for the show, John had chosen “Shucked”. This is a newer show that had only opened last spring and still had all of its original cast (my first time seeing a show with original cast!). One of the performers, Alex Newell, had won a Tony for their portrayal of Lulu, one of the four main characters. Alex had also appeared as “Mo” in the television show “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” which John and I had both enjoyed very much. The show focuses on a small place called Cob County whose very existence is centered around the corn they grow and revolves around the lives of the residents of this isolated community. When the corn starts to fail, our heroine Maizey sets out to find help from the big, scary outside world – much to the dismay of her fiancé, Beau. When Maizey finds a man who seems to be the answer to the corn problem and brings him back home to save the town it creates all sorts of other problems for Maizey, Beau, and Lulu. Now that Maizey has experienced the whole big world can she ever go back to being a small town girl again?
The show was absolutely hilarious and all of the musical numbers were super catchy (we bought the soundtrack on the train home that night). While a lot of the jokes were a little corn-y, it was still really fun. A few of the people sitting around us didn’t appreciate a lot of the adult humor (Lulu asserts that she doesn’t need to sacrifice any of her big personality for a man as long as she has a corn cob and some batteries and Maizey plans to get real close to one of the male characters and see if anything, feelings or otherwise, starts to grow- there are plenty of jokes about race, religion, and sexuality thrown in for good measure) but I was sure I was going to suffocate from laughing so hard.
Coming out of the theater and walking back through Times Square was probably one of the most magical experiences of the whole trip. There were lighted billboards and people everywhere! There were food carts and souvenir vendors on every corner and the air was full of hoking car corns and steam coming from the sewer grates and the occasion rumble of the subway running under our feet. I think that’s when I really started to fall in love with the city.
The next day, we hadn’t had enough so we hopped back on the train and went back for more. Like the night before, we started at Grand Central but this time we headed towards Rockefeller Center. We saw the skating rink and shopped in the Nintendo Store and FAO Schwartz.
We also visited Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and it was unbelievable. I am not a religious person but the incredible cathedral was definitely awe inspiring.
Our “big attraction” of the day was the Top of the Rock experience at 30 Rock. We bought tickets and rode to the very top of the 70 story building in an elevator that took 43 seconds to cover the distance. We had been considering which experience to do – this or the Empire State Building but we decided on this one because it offered a view of Central Park. It wasn’t very busy either – we purchased tickets upon arrival and waited maybe 15 minutes or so. I know that lines at the Empire State Building can get quite long so we that this was a pretty good experience. It all worked out quite well.
While we didn’t get to do everything that we wanted in the city – we could live there for years and not do everything we wanted to do- we were exhausted. We had been into the city three times now and walked around 5 miles each time and we were beat.
We decided to take Thursday and do something that had been on my bucket list for a long time. I have been a fan of The Office for a long while but have become pretty obsessed in recent years. During the COVID lockdowns I started watching the show constantly and really haven’t stopped. While the show was filmed in California, it was set in Scranton, PA and this was the closest point to Scranton we had hit in our travels. It was still about two hours away so we loaded up the dog and took her with us.
We saw many of the locations featured in the show – including the Penn Paper Tower and streets signs for Mulberry Street featured in the opening credits- and visited Cooper’s Seafood and Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe which were mentioned in the show many times. We drove by the Steamtown Mall, the Electric City sign, and the Radisson and we saw signs for Mount Pocono and Lake Wallenpaupack. Harley even got to get out and go potty and roll in the grass while in town. We picked up a few souvenirs (and some pizza) and drove back home with the satisfaction of having made this “holy pilgrimage”.
On Friday we had big plans…but we were too tired for anything. We went out to lunch at the Mount Kisko Diner and laid around the house resting up for the drive to Delaware the following day and making plans to visit The Big Apple again soon.
