Vacation in New York City

Pippin

I travel with my family to New York City a few times each year. We all love the city, as expensive and difficult as it can be. This year, my kids convinced me it's our "Christmas tradition" to visit NY at Christmastime so off we went.

Our first accomplishment was to score tickets to Pippin at the Tkts. Booth in Times Square. Perfect seats for a show I really wanted to take them to. I hadn't purchased tickets in advance because we weren't sure of our schedule so it was nice to get them so easily. 

I'd seen Pippin when I was very young, when Ben Vereen was the star. I think it was my first Broadway show and it was truly magical. This revival was also very good. They had replaced the dancing with acrobatics, and I did miss the Bob Fosse dancing. But the acrobats were amazing and every cast member gave an A+ performance. Excellent show.

We visited Rockefeller Center to see the tree.

As it happened, a man was proposing right there on the ice. They'd cleared off all the skaters and he popped the question. My pictures aren't the best, but they were both very happy.

Statue at Bryant Park

We visited the New York Public Library because I have an obsession with libraries. It's a beautiful building, but it doesn't actually house the collection, so it doesn't have quite the ambiance I like. I was not happy to see that Bryant Park, which is the small park behind the library is home to temporary shops during the Christmas season. There's also a skating rink there.

 I'm not much of a foodie, but we did visit the cafe run by the Cake Boss of TV fame. I passed up the pastries, which are not really my thing, but my kids reported that they were delicious.

Finally, we saw Newsies, another Broadway show that my kids adored. One of my daughters had already seen it with a friend and wanted to go again, and she said she'd see it a third time. It was good, but once was enough for me.

We walked all over the city and finished up our trip by going downtown to see the Freedom Tower. (Officially, it's One World Trade Center.) It's not open yet. It's an interesting building, but I don't think it has the presence that the Twin Towers had.