Christmas in NY 2010

It's hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone already and here we are in the New Year.  Before it passed us by we did get to make a trip into New York City for our favorite time of year with some of our favorite people. We headed into the city in Mid December on a beautiful, Saturday afternoon. After an extremely crowded train ride when we got there we were surprised to see thousands of people dressed up in their finest santa attire, yes, thousands, including my very own brother, whose interpretation was santa with a sombereo.

Clearly we were not the only ones partaking in the city's Holiday festivities. We were also along with hundreds of people who went to Macy's to get their picture taken with Santa, unfortunately with a 3 hour wait I would not be getting my picture with Santa this year.

My disappointment was soon forgotten when we passed a Crumbs bakery, of course we had to go in and sample the goods. I had never had one before and was dying to taste this deliciousness. It was an agonizing decision to pick out which cupcake I wanted to indulge in. With everything from apple pie, to vanilla coconut and chocolate ones galore, it was a tough choice, ultimately Mike selected the espresso one for us which was delicious, I also got a bite of Michelle's red velvet which was equally incredible. I think I need to go back and try them all, but I don't think my pants would ever fit me again....

We continued our journey up town through Times Square where we attempted a drink at the Hard Rock, bad move, all of Times Square seemed to be there also so we found our friendly neighborhood Irish pub Connelly's and parked ourselves there for a bit. Michelle, Amy and me were also entertained by two of the Santa-Con-Fellows that also stopped in for a beer.

For the highlight of the day, "the tree" its safe to say that we were not alone there either. I'd never seen Rockefeller Center as crowded as it was that day. We caught a quick glimpse of the tree before pushing our way through the crowd to get out of there.

Our dinner was the endcap of the night, I think we all had to roll out of there. We headed into Heartland Brewery where it felt like we ordered every appetizer on the menu, all of them being equally good, from awesome nachos to mozzarella sticks (they were romano and garlic crusted - delicious) to southern fried dill pickle spears, I made us order those, I had to try them, they weren't bad. We really enjoyed our meal, it could have been the company as well, Amy had a few good quotes of the night to get us going. Can't wait to see what next year brings for our trip, who knows maybe we'll be dressed up for santa con as well, I said I'd be an elf!