New York City March 4 - 7, 2011

Michael and I are off on a 3 F vacation...food, fun & use your imagination here ;-)

All of the plans (except the hotel, our favorite, the W New York) were made by him. I have some vague idea of what we are doing, such as I know what restaurants, but not really sure of the times, or order. He also got us tickets to see "Amerian Idiot" as Green Day is one of our favorite bands. I think we are going to also try to see what's available at TKTS for tonite. I do know that we have lunch planned at the 21 Club. It's a bit stuffy for my tastes, but Michael loves it, and the fact that jackets are required. However, we are driving up and it may be tight to make the reservation. C'est la vie!

The W New York is on Lexington Ave at 49th street. We love the location, as it is walking distance to Times Square, Central Park, and shopping. It was the first W we ever stayed in, and I'm pretty sure it is the original W in New York. That said, many people don't like it because the rooms are tiny. However, the decor is still really cool, and they have always treated us well. Besides, we aren't in the room that much! We also stay here because it is a Starwood property (yes, there are others in NYC). Starwood has a current promotion where you get double points for the stay, PLUS you get an extra 500 points per weekend (Thurs-Sun, inclusive) night! So we are getting double points plus an extra 1500 points! These will come in handy on our family trip to Thailand in December. We are paying a AAA rate of $199/night. AAA in the DC area is *really* expensive, BUT, we have well made our $$ back thru battery jumps, but mostly thru hotel discounts. We probably save at least $10/night off of non-prepaid nights (for example, the fully prepaid rate for this hotel was $189, but the "best available" was close to $220). Im not a big fan of pre-paid non-refundable nights as with kids, who knows what could happen!

We checked in and the clerk told us that as Starwood Gold members we were upgraded to a "spectacular" corner room with a king bed (most rooms here have a queen bed) and that we would get 2 free bottles of water per day AND free Internet! Whoohoo!!! Room was nice (still on the small side, though) with 2 windows (one on each outside wall) and another window with opaque glass in the bathroom. Bath amenities are Bliss Spa products. One thing I don't like about the W hotel line, though, is the lack of light in the rooms. Just never seems to be enough, I guess that's for the ambience (or maybe it's just my aging eyes).

We hurried and changed for lunch at 21 Club. Michael can write more about what we ate (he is now (he wants to participate in writing this blog, too).

We Then went back to the room for a nap (wine will do that to you...). Afterwards we decided to walk to the TKTS booth and see what we could get tickets for. I really wanted to wee "Wicked" as I read the book years ago. TKTS doesn't offer tickets to that, wo we went over to the theatre to see what kind of deal we could get there. We got a little bit of a discount on some first tier seats (my favorite place to sit). Since we had less than an hour until the show, we grabbed a bite at a Tex-Mex place Round the corner and hurried back.