Apple Sauce (Continued)

My co-workers and I really were in New York on business, but more on that later (left my notes at work).

So after we finished attending sessions on Monday and Tuesday, our time was our own. During a break Monday morning, I walked over to the St. James theater to get tickets for Tuesday night to see The Producers. I get a national theater newsletter, and I had printed off a page that said that if I presented it at the box office, I would receive 50 percent off. And even though I had printed it off and taken it with me, I really didn't think it would amount to anything. So when I handed it over to the person working at the box office, I nearly fell over when I found out that we were getting $110 seats for half the price! And the seats were in the orchestra section, row 13, center. Things were going well.

The weather was unseasonably cold, of course, with biting winds and snow. But we were determined to experience the city--on foot. Just walking around in the theater district is an amazing adventure, but the challenge was on to find a reasonably priced dinner(since breakfast had not been very reasonably priced). Our quest took us to Rockefeller Center, where we enjoyed seeing the famous ice rink and other sights, but, unfortunately, no reasonably priced meals. A few blocks from there, we found St. Patrick's Cathedral, which K. and I decided was not as awesome as the National Cathedral in D.C. But it was interesting (and sad, actually) to see the people there praying and truly, in some instances, worshipping the icons. Soon after, we encountered that most famous of New York gourmet delights, Burger Heaven, which did offer food at a reasonable price. After we returned to the hotel, M. and I climbed under our respective covers to warm up and watched a movie in our room, one of my favorite hotel things to do.

Tuesday night was the big Broadway musical event--my second and K. and M.'s first. The evening began at a real New York Italian restaurant that offered good food at a somewhat reasonable price. And then it was on to the St. James, where Tony Danza was starring in The Producers. Our seats were great, and it was certainly exciting to be watching a live musical on Broadway. While the show was a little more risque than I had expected, it was a biting satire--and very funny. The sets were elaborate, and the actors fantastic. There really isn't anything quite like it.

Having finished all of our sessions, M. and I were ready for yet another NYC experience: SHOPPING. Because she actually had shopping experience in New York, M. was much more prepared for this than I. As usual, I had the absolutely worst possible shoes for this. (Last September, I went hiking with a friend in a local park through muddy swamplands--in cute sandals! Obviously I haven't learned much). And while I had come with gloves, I had no hat or scarf. I had purchased a reasonably priced scarf at a souvenir shop on Tuesday. So our game plan was to start at the southern part of Manhattan and work our way up--via the subway.

I've been on subways before--in London and D.C. But this was every bit as disgusting as we've all heard. (I barely missed walking through vomit at one point.) Our first stop was at the South Seaport shops, kind of a mall of touristy stores. I did make my first purchase there--ear muffs. Our next stop was probably my favorite--Canal Street in SoHo. This is sort of a citified version of a flea market--except the shops are filled with my favorite things: knock-off designer handbags and cheap clothes and jewelry. At one store I bought my first two faux handbags--a Prada and a Kate Spade (for my Katie--and all her friends are jealous!). At the next stop was a must-have Dolce and Gabbana spring bag, but I didn't have enough cash (that's all they take). When I asked the store clerk if she could take the cash I had for it, she directed me to the ATM located in the shop. That is good sales strategy. I decided that my quota of cheap, knock-off handbags was now filled, until the salesperson in the next shop approached M. and secretively motioned her to the back, where there would be Gucci, Prada (the real thing, of course). I looked at a nice, so-called Gucci bag--kind of a briefcase sort of thing--just for fun. I asked the salesgirl how much it was, and she told me forty-five dollars. I indicated that I wasn't interested, and then she responded by asking me how much I wanted to pay for it. My goal here was to leave the shop with no more purses, so I told her the ridiculously low price of twenty-five dollars. She came back with forty, I said thirty, and then M. so helpfully suggested I offer thirty-five. Now it had moved beyond shopping into a competition, and two forces converged, rendering me helpless: competitive shopping. Of course the salesgirl accepted my offer of thirty-five dollars, and now I had purchased four bags that I was going to have to get back to Michigan somehow. (And M. insists that the Gucci bag is real because it has no "made in China" tag like the others we purchased.)

Our next stop was Greenwich Village and the NYU area, and M. asked a city worker to take a picture of us by the famous arch that appears in so many movies and TV shows, including one of my favorites, When Harry Met Sally . We ended our shopping experience at Macy's in Herald Square and found out that people from out of town who are shopping there get an eleven percent discount (don't ever say that this blog does not offer practical information).

By now I was thorougly exhausted and in pain and was sure that upon returning to Michigan, my feet would have to be amputated, and all because I am too vain to wear tennis shoes. After getting two huge pieces of cheesecake to go at THE cheesecake place when in NYC, we collected our things and got a cab to take us back to LaGuardia. Again, the experienced M. had brought along a duffel bag just in case we actually purchased anything when we shopped. So the first part of our cab ride was spent stuffing as many handbags and sweatshirts into the small duffel bag as possible. And it turned out that the Gucci bag was a smart idea--I was able to stuff some of my purchases and my purse into it (readers of the Shopaholics books are smiling right now at this rationale).

Our cab ride back to the airport took us through Central Park, and I held my breath as I went through airport security and was informed my tote bag (with the cheesecake) had to be searched. In the end, I lost a bottle of water, which I begged for a drink from--those security people are harsh--and a plastic fork that I planned to use to eat the cheesecake. Thankfully my cheesecake was not a security threat. The fork problem was quickly solved on the other side, where the fast food restaurants were filled with apparently less threatening plastic forks than the one that had been in my tote bag.

And that brings me to the end of the purely pleasure parts of our adventures in the big city. I arrived in Grand Rapids with three purses I did not need, extremely sore feet, and some really great memories (and, obviously, lots of blog fodder).