Thanksgiving 2012 | Torrington, CT & NYC Friday

Justin and I were lucky to be able to spend this Thanksgiving with my family in Connecticut, followed by a trip to New York City. It all started in June when our neighbors found out they were pregnant and wanted to go on one last trip before the baby came. In true Katie & Christine planning style - we planned a trip to New York City in like 5 hours...perfect right?! Yes...until the next day when Michael & Christine found out they were having twins and our dreams of a NYC Thanksgiving went bye-bye :( but I can't wait to meet those babies!!

Justin and I decided we would "brave"the city by ourselves haha (even though Justin thought we would die...even more so after Hurricane Sandy hit). Justin and I went to NYC spring break of 2006 (I gave him the trip after we had been dating for 3 months...I knew if that scared him away it wasn't meant to be haha) and I have been to NYC I don't know how many times. Justin's first time there we did a lot of touristy stuff...Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, Double Decker bus tour, Broadway plays...so this time we decided to take a more laid back approach with no plans (other than the 9/11 memorial since our play got cancelled). We decided to change our outgoing flight and fly into Hartford, CT instead so we could have Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family. After a delayed flight and an issue with our hotel we finally went to bed on Thanksgiving morning at 3am...talk about a long day!!

My parents picked us up at our hotel and we headed to Torrington. We stopped at my grandpa's house so my mom could prepare her dishes. While she was in the kitchen I was kitty hunting :) as in looking for my Uncle's cats. Unfortunately I only snapped a picture of Phoebe...the only evil cat in the house.

Phoebe

After my mom's dishes were ready we headed over to her Aunt Althea's house for Thanksgiving. There were 19 of us! It was a fun change to have a big family meal since our Texas family is so small. We finally got to meet baby Drew...my (second) cousin Emily's baby...He is the most adorable baby I have ever seen...just wait!

View of Torrington

Pretty backyard

Table for 19!

Baby Drew...See...absolutely precious!!

Drew had some nifty toys at dinner...we were jealous!

Our Thanksgiving Picture :)

Friday morning my parents headed to Boston to catch their flight home and my mom's cousin Keith took Justin and I to the train station in Waterbury. We had a nice relaxing train ride and Justin got to see Grand Central Station for the first time! We headed straight to Queens (Jackson Heights to be specific) to drop our luggage at my Uncle's apartment and then took the train back to Manhattan, grabbed lunch at Grand Central and then headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We stepped off the subway at 77th & Lexington and a man came over and asked us for directions to a restaurant...we had to tell him sorry, we don't even know where we're going but we wish we could help him! Only 2 hours in the city and we looked like locals...nice! (We got asked for directions again on Sunday and were actually able to help the people...it was a good feeling!)

The first of MANY Central Park pictures 

Justin & Central Park

Me & Central Park

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Some Roman/Greek column

Poor statue...

Twin art for Christine!

This was a room from a hotel in Grasse, France...where we went to the perfume factory outside of Cannes last year!

Beautiful stained glass!!

Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Pretty view of Central Park

More Egyptian Art

Outside of the American Exhibit Hall

So many oboes!

Pretty building across the street from the MET

Can't go to NY without taking a Taxi picture!

Central Park Sunset

After walking around the MET for a couple hours our feet were killing us but we decided to head over to Bryant Park to check out their Christmas Market and had a drink at the Southwest Porch. 

Took a detour through Rockefeller Center

They had the scaffolding up because they were putting on the lights...and Justin thought our tree was bad!

Ice Skaters!

We were getting hungry so we ended up going over to John's Pizza and had a WONDERFUL dinner!! The restaurant is built inside of an old church and has such a cool atmosphere and their pizza is amazing!

Inside of John's

After dinner we walked across the street to Shake Shack...we had seen it earlier and it was BUSY so we decided to check it out. We got a concrete - frozen custard - with marshmallow sauce and chocolate covered pretzels and it was to die for! After eating our ice cream we decided we were officially done for the day and headed back to the apartment and crashed. NYC is exhausting!

Next Up: New York City | Saturday!