New York City - Mini Vacation While On Vacation!

This week Tim and I took a little mini vacation (while already on vacation) to NYC! How awesome is that? We had a few free nights saved up from reward points at the Marriott so we snagged some cheap bus tickets, packed a little suitcase and we were on our way. It was freezing cold but it wasn't anything long john's, tons of layers, and a scarf couldn't fix!

^^ Excuse our frazzled appearance. We had to get up to catch the 4:30am bus to New York! ^^

Tim spent a couple months in NYC last summer while we were engaged for work and I got the chance to come out and visit him. My mom, brothers and I got to spend about 5 days out there visiting him. We didn't get to do all the things that we wanted to do so this trip was great for tying up loose ends. These were a few of my favorite things we did! Dessert at Serendipity 3
We ordered the infamous frozen hot chocolate and it was delicious! I felt sick the entire rest of the night. It was unbelievably rich. 

Wicked
For those of you that aren't aware of the lottery system for broadway plays in NYC, this is for you! When you are on a budget but want to see some shows this is the best way to go about doing it. Find out when they are drawing for the lottery of the show you want to see. Show up in that time period to write your name down and throw it in the hat.
Tips and tricks for getting a lottery ticket for a show: If you have family or friends with you that have some extra time to kill and aren't wanting to see a show have them come with you and put their names in the drawing as well. This will raise your chances of getting picked since they can just give their ticket to you if they get selected. Remember to have cash on you! The tickets are usually for $30 each and you have to have your ID and cash with you right then otherwise they will pick somebody else. The best part is that you usually get amazing seats! When my husband and I went we weren't lucky enough to have anyone with us but we got lucky enough to get selected. We were on the very front row and it was absolutely amazing. Our seat was definitely worth hundreds of dollars so we felt very fortunate. 
Tim and I have both wanted to see Wicked for years. We've tried to get the lottery tickets a bunch of times but never succeeded (everyone lines up and writes their name down and they draw names for 26 tickets. You can pick request one or two tickets so they usually only end up calling 13 names.) There were about 300 people lined up so we didn't have high hopes but I screamed and ran to the front when they yelled out Kelsey Eaton! We got to sit in the very front row. It was seriously amazing. 

^^ Our seats. Were we close or what?! ^^

Colbert Report Tim is obsessed with the Colbert Report. As his wife I now watch it too. It was on Tim's bucket list to go see a live taping of it so the night before we left we got online just to see if there were any tickets. They were sold out for months out but happened to have 2 tickets available the next day which is the day that we were going! Talk about lucky! It was really interesting seeing how it all works. They had a comedian come out before Steve came out to get us all laughing. We then had to practice laughing really loud since they dont have a laugh track. I was so afraid that I would cough or sneeze and ruin the whole thing. ;)
We also did lots of wandering around the city. I think we spent about half of the time in the subways. While we were down in the tunnels they announced that they were shutting the subways down for a little while while an investigation was going on. We later found out a 17 year old boy from Long Island was messing around with his friends and were daring each other to cross the tracks. He was the 2nd to go and was fatally struck by the train, So sad.  Well I guess on that sad note I'll end this. We still have a couple days left in Boston before we head home to Salt Lake. We're hoping it warms up a bit because we are going on a Duck Tour tomorrow and celebrating Cannoli Day!