NYC UPenn 10yr Reunion

This past weekend we headed up to NYC to visit with some old friends from UPenn as a mini 10 year reunion, and while we were in the area we decided to fit in some sightseeing as well!  Friday night we drove to Trenton after work and took the train into NYC.  Our hotel was in Times Square, so it was quite fun walking out of Penn Station and walking through Times Square at night!  We got there pretty late, so we wandered down the road and found the best little Mexican restaurant - Ta Cocina.  We highly recommend their mango chicken, it was delicious!!    The next morning we grabbed a pastry nearby at Juniors Bakery - it looked to be quite the popular breakfast stop, and wandered around the Times Square area.

 Mike has told me many stories about his trips up the glass elevators in the Marriott Marquee Hotel in Times Square, so we had to stop in and take a ride. I can see how he loved it as a kid (and still today) - its quite the atruim!  Afterwards we wandered through Times Square again to see it during daylight hours.  It was a beautiful day to snap some photos!!



                                                             Me, eating my apple danish

 
We didn't have too much time before we needed to hop on the train to Brian's house in Woodcliff Lake, NJ for our Penn reunion gathering.  So, we decided it was a nice day for a stroll through central park:
 

 
We walked from the south portion of the park up to the Guggenheim:
 

 
On the way to the train, we stopped for a slice of NY pizza...so tasty!  Its hard to find pizza this good in DC!

 
And for a tasty treat afterwards, we stopped at Crumbs Bakery for a delicious Swizzle cupcake.  We decided to pick up a few more to take to the party for everyone to enjoy...
 

We had to switch trains in Hoboken to take the PATH up to Woodcliff Lake.  The train station was much more impressive than either of us imagined:
 

 
Sadly, we took no pictures at Brian's house.  But, we had a blast.  Thanks to Brian and Jamie for hosting us - it was so good to see the old gang (and meet their kids!). 
 
The next day we headed back into the city to continue our sightseeing.  First stop, the Empire State Building.  Oddly, in all of my trips to NYC, I've never been to the top so we splurged on tickets to check out the view:
 

From the top, we noticed what looked like a pretty green roofdeck on a highrise pretty close by.  We decided to walk that way to see if we could actually find a rooftop terrace for lunch.  Turns out we were right - 230 5th Street served great food with a great view!!

We finished off the day by going down to the see the area by the World Trade Center.  We were able to see a preview of the final site design as well as some of the museum displays.  It was almost eerie walking around the area, but good to see that alot of progress has been made on the memorial.  We're looking forward to visiting it again once its finished.