Christmas in New York - 2008

As most of you may or may not know, I've been "commuting" to New York every other week for the past 3 months or so. It was kind of a bittersweet deal in that I enjoyed going to New York but I really missed being home with my family.

Every week (and then every other week) we stayed at the Radisson on Lexington & 48th. For the past 3 months, this was my home away from home. I joined their points program and I'm already a gold member.

The weather has been awesome! We had one rainy kind of day but for the most part, we had wonderful weather. Monday, we actually had weather that was warm enough to be outside in shorts. Brian, my colleague, was looking forward to some snow or at least some cold weather. After all, we did pack our winter coats. On Tuesday, we decided that we'd head over to Rockefeller Center to check out the tree. Half way through the day, it began to snow. I kid you not. It was very light but it was still snow.

So we bundled up and headed over to Rockefeller Center. It was great walking around in the snow and the cold.

Here I am in front of the tree at Rockefeller Center. You can still see the light snow. The area was very festive and full of people taking photos.
This one didn't come out very well but I thought this was cool. If I wasn't afraid to ice skate (I'm afraid I'll fall and someone will skate over my fingers), I'd have tried to talk Brian into skating.

Here's another shot of just the tree. It was really nice.

Here's Brian. He didn't want to be on the blog but too bad. You can see the snow a little. It was starting to come down again. We were cold but we still thought it was cool to out in it. (at least I did, Brian might have just been humoring me.)

After we checked out the tree, we walked across the street to Saks. They had their Christmas windows up. I really wanted to see them because I'd heard so much about how all the stores go all out to do their windows. Macy's was too far so we checked out Saks.
Saks had these snowflakes on the building. When they'd play Christmas carols, the snowflakes would blink to the music. You can see the snow a little more here.
Here's one of the window displays. There was a series of 5 or so windows telling a story about Mike the snowflake. These were kind of cool but I heard someone asking about FAO Schwartz, the toy place. I bet they had some cool windows. I hadn't really planned for this so I didn't know where they were. It was beginning to snow a little more so we headed out and started looking for something to eat.
Here's a shot as we were leaving the area. The snow is coming down a little harder. By this time we were really cold. We walked around some more and finally gave up looking for some really cool place to eat. We headed back to toward the hotel and ate at a pizza place that was across the street from the hotel. At this point, my black coat was white. I was covered and so was Brian. It was coming down a lot harder. I kept getting hit in the eye with snow. Sheesh!

By the time we got back to the hotel, the novelty of walking around in the cold and the snow had really worn off. We were freezing. My coat was wet and my gloves were soaked.

Over all, the job in New York was a great experience. Everytime John & I go somewhere, I always wonder what it would be like to live there. This is as close as I'm going to come to living in New York. I'd say it was pretty cool but there's no place like home.