Memories of Our NYC Trips: Where Bloggers Live

Our Where Bloggers Live group has talked about vacation memories, but we decided to include another travel post since there are many branches of travel.

I’m focusing on the Big Apple. “The City.” The place where dreams happen.
This book pictured is no ordinary book. It holds memories of our NYC trips. Well, at least the first few ones that I had time to put together, haha!!

Quote of the day: “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” Golda Meir

Even though I gave a small blurb about our NYC trips in the vacation memories post, I wanted to share more details. The funny things that happened and still make us laugh to this day.
You might wonder how I remember those details. I used to write down all of the things we did and the places we went.

Then when my husband had to spend weekends working for his IT job, I would go with him and put together a scrapbook of the trips. It takes a lot of time to scrapbook, so you can see how that got put to the wayside.

My History with NYC

But let me start with the 2 times I visited NYC before I met Rob.

The first time was in college. My college roommate lived in NJ, and when I was out visiting her and her family for a week, she planned for us to spend a day in NYC. I have NO memory of what we saw in the city or where we went.
All that I remember is my friend saying 2 things:
1-“Jodie, don’t look at people and especially don’t smile at them” (I’ve always been a smiler)
2-“Wear your purse around your body and hang onto it at all times.”

Those things make you realize how rough the city was in those days (I was in college between 1984-1988, so it was sometime between those years).

The second time I went out was to visit my college friend who had moved out there. It must have been around 1990. She took me out to the bars and we spent a day in Central Park.
The things I remember:
1-It was SO dirty.
2-Central Park was huge.
3-They had the best radio stations.
4-She was paying $1000 a month for an apartment that was SO small.

How It Started

When Rob and I got engaged we figured we needed to go meet Rob’s family in New York. In order to make it a fun getaway, Rob came up with the idea to spend 2 days in NYC before we headed out to meet the family.
This was scheduled for Labor Day weekend, which then became a tradition for the next 8 years. (Don’t worry, I’m not sharing all the trips).

I fell in love with it so much during the short weekend trips that we talked about moving there (not really really, but kinda really).
One of the things I absolutely LOVED was the walkability.

In fact, almost every time we came home to Denver, I would say, let’s walk to the gym or someplace. And it was MUCH further than you thought because our Denver suburb was made for driving.

BTW, I shared more fun facts in my email so this post wouldn’t be so long. I would love to invite you to sign up for the emails below. My email family gets personal tidbits of what’s going on in my life along with other happenings, sales, information, giveaways, and interesting articles. Sometimes I even include the blooper or extra photos from our photo shoots.

The First Adventure: 2003

Rob planned the first trip: where we stayed, and what things we were going to do. We left straight from the dental office on Thursday afternoon and had a “snack” at the airport at Pour La France. This is something we then copied on all of our trips.

One of the funny stories is about the hotel. One reason that Rob chose it was that they had a 24-hour cappuccino machine in the lobby (he used to be a coffee snob). The first time he tried it, he said it tasted awful. We tried again the next day with the same results, and then we saw the sign that said it was being cleaned.

So basically, he was drinking Clorox!!

Because I would regularly get massages, Rob even scheduled us a couple’s massage. He had never had one before, and beforehand, I walked him through how you’re always covered with a sheet and it’s very relaxing.
Well, needless to say, the place where he scheduled our massage was a tad different. They jumped on our backs, they only used a small towel to cover our rear end. It was crazy!!

What’s amazing is that even though it wasn’t what we were expecting, Rob still gets massages to this day.

The last funny event was that we brought a bottle of champagne in our suitcase to celebrate our engagement. And we drank it before we headed out to dinner the night we went to see “The Lion King”.
Right after we ate and before dessert was served, I got really quiet because I started feeling queasy from the champagne.

I told Rob I was going to the bathroom, where I stayed for a good 20 minutes upchucking. When I came back to the table, he had eaten the ENTIRE dessert by himself.
His rationale? He thought I had changed my mind about marrying him!!

The next day we took the train up to Yorktown Heights to meet the family. Rob’s sister, Diana is pictured with us below.

2004

I loved our short trip in NYC, and was just amazed at how clean and safe it felt (especially after my previous experiences there in my youth).
Therefore, we decided to make it a tradition and to try to stay all over the city and explore what it had to offer.

This time, I planned most of the trip, and we went to see “Beauty and the Beast” with front row seats no less.
We also went to the Empire State Building.

On the elevator up to the top, the elevator stopped at the 85th floor, and a guy got out. So all of us tourists followed him. It was actually a worker getting out on that floor and it wasn’t meant for us tourists, so he helped all of us get up to the top a different way!!
We always laugh that we saw a part of the Empire State Building that others haven’t seen.

2005–Central Park

This was the trip that I fell in love with Central Park. Sure, I’d been to a portion of it with my college friend, but I just didn’t realize how extensive and HUGE it was.
If you’ve been there, then you know. This year, they were celebrating the 150th anniversary, so we got a map and explored a bunch of it.

The park is so big that we decided to spend another trip exploring the north end of it.

Each time we would come out for the long weekend, we would also invite Rob’s family to meet up with us for dinner one night. On this trip, we met up at Tavern on the Green. We were very happy that we did because it ended up closing down from 2009-2014.

2006-The Financial District

Since I wanted to see all the parts of NYC, this year we decided to stay in the southern tip or the Financial District.
We made it to Ellis Island and saw the plaques with both Rob’s dad’s family name and his mom’s family name on them. It really was SO enlightening, to see what people had to go through to get into our country.

Insider info: Rob’s mom came over through Ellis Island when she was only 7 years old speaking no English at the time.

We also saw the construction for the 9-11 Memorial in progress. We have been to the 9-11 Memorial twice now, and we would go back again. It’s definitely a must-see.

We never made it to ALL of the boroughs or areas in NYC like I had imagined. After Rob’s mom passed in 2011, we stopped the tradition and life had other things in store. We have been out with friends twice since, and one time I even blogged about my packing list and what I considered good and bad (this was before I started traveling in a dress).

Where Bloggers Live

What is Where Bloggers Live? It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and hear all about the personal backstories and interesting details? Go take a gander at everyone else’s stories about their favorite movies.
FYI, we don’t all post at the same time since we all have different schedules and live in different parts of the country

Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
Sally at Within a World of My Own

The Series

We’ve been doing this fun series for a long time as you can see by all of the prompts below. Feel free to visit any that might strike your fancy.

Welcome to Jodie’s Touch of Style. I’m here to prove that it’s never too late to look great. Clothing and style are meant to showcase your inner personality. So let’s have fun and try new things.

It’s not just about me on this blog, but also about my mother and friend. We get to showcase not only different decades of life but also different body shapes and unique personal styles.

Find out more about all of us here. And make sure to join the email list where I include so much more.