Mom and I decided to make a long weekend of the Veteran's Day holiday and went to NYC the Saturday before Veteran's Day and returned home Tuesday.
We were fortunate to get a good deal on the airfare direct from Savannah, GA to LaGuardia on Delta. Once the flight was booked I found the Washington Jefferson Hotel on 51st St. for $370 a night and made the room reservation. The hotel could be cancelled up to a day prior to arrival without penalty, which was a good thing.
I had booked the hotel a couple months in advance, but the Wednesday before we were to leave I was checking out hotwire and to my surprise a 4 star hotel in the theater district was listed at $269 per night. I had never used hotwire before, but for $100 savings per night I cancelled the Washington Jefferson and booked the hotwire hotel.
To my astonishment we got the Broadway Millennium Hotel at 145 W. 44th Street between 6th & 7th Avenues. We loved the hotel and we even got a corner room on the 49th floor. We looked one way and saw Times Square the other way the Chrysler Building...we were off to great start!
For months prior to this trip I was continually checking theater ticket discounts on http://www.playbill.com/. That paid off too.We had tickets for Billy Elliot on Saturday night, Gypsy for the Sunday matinee, Chicago on Sunday evening and Shrek the Musical on Monday evening. All were discounts, and yes, all balcony seats, but no problems seeing the stages.
Saturday evening we had a pre-theater dinner at Vice Versa located at 325 W. 51st St. between 8th & 9th. The meal was excellent. We had the eggplant roll starter. I had the potato gnocchi with proscuitto and porcini mushrooms in cream sauce. Mom had the braised lamb shank with polenta and vegetable gravy. Both were delicious. With 4 glasses of wine and 2 espressos the total for the meal was $115.
Then we were off to see Billy Elliot. This was by far our favorite show of the weekend. The music and dancing were fantastic. I highly recommend this show.
Sunday morning we had brunch at Havana Central and honestly, we were underwhelmed. I picked this place for one reason and that was I could earn 1000 points on OpenTable.com if I made an 11:45am reservation and that's why I chose this place. I had the huevos con frijoles which were ok and mom had the eggs florentine. The food was just luke warm, which is a demerit in mom's book because she loves her food "atomic" hot!
After brunch we headed down to Macy's to kill some time before the 3pm matinee of Gypsy. A little retail therapy never hurts!
Let me preface this by saying I adore Patti Lupone and when I was a youngster I had the good fortune to have parents who loved the theater and I saw Patti Lupone in Evita the day after she won the Tony award for that roll, so I am a little biased when it comes to Patti Lupone. I enjoyed Gypsy and Patti Lupone's performance was great, but I did feel a little "flat" leaving the theater. I can't pinpoint why, maybe because I loved Billy Elliot so much the night before, but I just wasn't blown away by Gypsy. I understand that Gypsy will be closing in March, and I am glad I got to see Patti Lupone again.
After Gypsy ended, close to 6pm we had just enough time to go back to the hotel, get our jackets and head up to the Ambassador Theater to see the 7pm performance of Chicago.
I really enjoyed Chicago, this was the 3rd time mom had seen this show, but she said it was the best performance she had seen of this show. I thought the woman who played Velma Kelly (Brenda Braxton) was great...she has an incredable voice!
The show ended at about 9:30pm and we had a 10pm reservation at Roberto Passon located at 741 9th Avenue (corner of 50th St.). This was by far our favorite meal of the trip and we would not ever hesitate to go to this restaurant again. We had the grilled portobello, grilled tomato and sheep's cheese starter and it was "to die for". I would have been happy if that was the only thing we had. But, we each had an entree. I had the salmon topped with carmelized onions on a bed of garlic spinach and vegetables. It was absolutely delicious. Mom had the calf livers with potato cake and spinach. The best calf livers mom had ever had. For dessert I chose to have the tiramisu and it was wonderful, very light, and creamy. With 2 glasses of wine, a kir royal and 2 espressos this meal was $90.
Monday we had breakfast at Maison located at 7th Ave. and 53rd Street. We had been to this restaurant before for breakfast and like it alot. Prices are very reasonable for NYC and the food is good. We really like the orange juice there!
After breakfast we made our way to the corner of 5th Ave and 60th street to meet our tour guide for a guided walk through Central Park.Our guide was Bob Gelber (walkinny.com). When we were in NYC last spring we had Bob as a guide on the Foods of NY Chelsea Market tour. We thought he was terrific and I found his own website and found that he does a variety of walking tours. He had a planned Central Park walking tour the Monday before we would be in NYC but he was available for a private tour the Monday we were there and booked him. We really like Bob's style. Very casual, but he is a wealth of information. We met him at 10:30am and spent 3 hours walking through the park, he points out interesting pieces of history about the park and NYC in general. We meandered through the park including the Ramble, Bethesda Fountain and ended at the Belvedeer Castle. At the end of the tour Bob walked with us over to Zabar's to make sure we found our way there.
Yes, it was a private tour, and it did cost $75 for 3 hours, but his scheduled group tours are $15 per person. Unfortunately for us, the group tour didn't work into our schedule, but we were glad he was available for a private tour. I would not hesitate to use his services again for another tour.
This afternoon we were scheduled for the 3:30pm backstage tour of the Metropolitan Opera House, so we made our way over to Lincoln Center. The tour was very interesting and we got to see not only backstage, but also the dressing rooms, and the rehersal studios, costume production and scenic production workshops. The only negative I have to say is that the woman guiding the tour undoubtedly knows alot about opera and the inner workings of the Met, but her delivery of the information for a group of 15 needs a little work. At times it was very difficult to hear her (yes they were setting up for a performance that evening) but also, logistically she had us going up and down in the elevator and back-tracking. I do recommend this tour, I just think it is the luck of the draw on who is leading the tour.
We were done with the tour by 5:20pm and we had a 5:45pm dinner reservation at Sosa Borella at 832 8th Ave (near 50th St., I think). This is an Argentine Italian restaurant and we had another terrific meal here.
The service was outstanding. We had glasses of Argentine wine selected by our server and she did an outstanding job selecting the wines.
For starters mom had the squash soup and I had the carpaccio breasoala (aged beef with Argentine parmesean cheese) on arugala. Both were excellent. For our entres mom had the roasted rosemary chicken with gorgonzola mashed potatoes which were out of this world good. I had the spinach ravioli stuffed with ricotta and lamb ragout, which was very good. For dessert we had the orange flavored bread pudding, which was light and perfection! With 2 espressos to finish things off the total was $135.
We had tickets for the 8pm performance of Shrek the Musical, which had just started previews 2 nights before. As expected there were lots of children in the audience, but like the movie, lots of adult humor in the show. The cast was outstanding and the music was terrific. 
Tuesday arrived all to quickly and the car service (Carmel) was there to pick us up right on time Tuesday morning and we were on our way back home.
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