Our trip did not get off to the best start. There was some really bad weather all over the Midwest and East and I got a notification that our flight to Detroit was delayed. We only had a 50 minute layover, so I did not want to get stuck with a cascading delay that would make us miss the connecting flight. Luckily there was space on flights to connect through Minneapolis and we only got into LaGuardia 45 minutes later than the original flight. There was a bit of nervousness when we had to wait for a storm to pass through before leaving Peoria, but we made everything on time.
After settling into our room, we walked over to the New York Road Runners office to pick up our bibs and shirts for the race on Sunday. After this, we were starving since we had not eaten since breakfast. We walked down to a pizza place near Times Square and ate at a table right in the heart of Times Square. We walked around the square a bit and then headed back up to the hotel to drop off some bags.
The Park Hyatt was really close to Central Park, so we wandered around for a little while before dinner. We found this really nice, private trail that made you forget you were in the middle of the city. You could spend days exploring all of Central Park.
For this trip, I left the selection of the restaurants up to Samantha. She found the R Lounge in the Renaissance Hotel. This lounge had an amazing view over Times Square. We had drinks, appetizers, and a small plate to share. It was just what we needed given that we had pizza not too long before. We got some cupcakes for dessert at Carlo’s Bakery which were good, but would probably have been better and fresher earlier in the day.
We then walked over to the theater for Phantom of the Opera. We had won the opportunity to buy discounted seats from the online ticket lottery. The way the lottery works is you fill in your information the night before or in the morning the day of the show, and then you get notified if you have won the opportunity to buy tickets at a discounted price. Not every show offers it, but it is a great deal if you get lucky enough to be selected. Every show has different entry times, so I made a spreadsheet with the shows we wanted to enter, the URLs, and the times to enter. Broadway for Broke People is a good place to get an overview of what is available.
Our seats that we won from the ticket lottery were in second row on the right side. There were a few things we could not see, but all in all they were great seats. However, it was difficult to understand the performers in places and I did not feel as though it was performed all that well. That might have partly been due to the seat location. In addition, there was also this very high-strung usher who would yell at people if they walked by him as he had to show everyone to their seats. I found the whole situation amusing.
We then walked back to the hotel and went to bed since we had a very early start to the day and we were exhausted.