Julie's Journal

I am truly blessed, fortunate and grateful for a wonderful trip to New York City with my good friend, Mary Sydney. We left Tuesday morning at 6:30 a.m. Dad got up and drove us to the airport in the middle of the night. It was raining when we arrived, but stopped by noon and never rained again. Beautiful weather for walking. We shopped at a great discount store (Daffys), had lunch at an Italian restaurant, went to Grand Central Station to look around (just 2 blocks from our hotel), and just enjoyed walking and looking.

Checked in our hotel about 3:00 - Iroquois Boutique Hotel on 44th Street. It is a beautiful small hotel - first class - on a National Register List of Best Small Hotels in the world. We went to see "Hairspray" that night with Diane DeGarno (American Idol runner-up 2004). It was really fabulous - so funny - and Diane should get an Emmy. She was great! Quite an actress.

Wednesday the highlights were riding the subway down to Canal Street and Chinatown where the shopping is amazing. They have all of these mock-up designer things at a fraction of the cost. We ate at an authentic Chinese restaurant and took the subway back up to Lincoln Center (had to change trains at Time Square, but everybody took care of us wherever we went and helped us and we didn't even have to ask). We planned to walk through Central Park, but a rickshaw driver, Peter from Poland, approached us and convinced us we would see much more on a rickshaw, so we hopped aboard. He was a great guide. He would stop and let us take pictures and pointed out so many interesting things we would have totally missed if we had walked. Anyhow, it's too many acres for us to have covered that much territory in one hour by foot.

We went to see Mama Mia that night and walked to the theatre. We stopped to have a bite to eat on the way, but neither of us were very hungry. The waitress seated us by the windows that went all the way down to the floor and were open. Outside on the sidewalk was a vendor selling kabobs, pretzels and other stuff, so I stepped out of the window and bought a huge hot pretzel which we had with our beer while we waited for the soup to come. Mama Mia was also fabulous. I think we saw the 2 best plays in New York.

We didn't have time to do much on Thursday as our ride to the airport picked us up at 10:30. So, we just walked down the street and had a fabulous breakfast, packed and headed home. This was a dream trip. I wasn't sure I would get to go when she invited me because of Dad's situation, but she was willing to take a chance. God has answered all of our prayers in the last few weeks. So many blessings! Thank each of you who are reading this for praying for Dan. I can't believe he's now in Ireland!