Broadway Bound... Again!

I just got back from a long weekend in New York City with my best friend Nicole. It was the second "Broadway Trip" of ours, and we plan to take more in the future! It's kind of a tradition already: We see five Broadway shows in three days! We had so much fun (again). Here's a broad brush of our weekend adventures!

I flew to Chicago Thursday to spend a little time with Nicole, and meet the newest addition to her family! The next day we flew together to NYC! Here we are at the airport right after arrival. It's the obligatory "Welcome Photo" (we took the same one last time we went)!

We had a drink at Sardi's (we couldn't afford anything else!) and then went to our first show, Memphis:

Afterward we went to our favorite post-theatre hangout, Don't Tell Mamma's! It's an awesome piano/cabaret bar... perfect for theatre nuts like us! Here's another obligatory shot (click here for last year's)!

That night we got home at 3:30am, and the next morning we got up at 7:00 to walk through Central Park! We were so tired and walked a TON, and our bodies felt it! Along the way we found the Pop-Up Piano at Central Park, so we had to stop to play it!

And because we are a glutton for punishment, after we left Central Park we walked about 15 blocks to Bryant Park to take a modern dance class on the lawn with the Limon Dance Company. I found the class when looking for free stuff to do in NYC over the weekend, and when we got there we almost chickened out. I mean, it's a dance class in the middle of the park with tons of people hanging out all around you! I haven't had a dance class in like 15 years! But they assured us it was an easy class for any level, and we eventually just went for it. It wasn't technically difficult, but it was physically challenging (especially since we had spent the previous three hours walking)! Lots of running, skipping, galloping, jumping. And it's summer (hello)! We were sweaty and gross, and every time we bent over to stretch or something and I caught an upside down glimpse of tourists snapping photos I thought, "Whose blog is my butt going to end up on?" But it was really fun. I will never forget stretching up to the sky and seeing the skyscrapers all around us. Amazing. Here we are (completely sweaty and gross) with our instructor, the Associate Artistic Director:

We went back to the hotel to shower and then it was off to show #2, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, starring Robin Williams:

We stayed after the show to try to get Robin Williams' autograph, but he didn't come out.  Bummer!  The next night he just happened to walk by us as we were waiting for autographs at another show and Nicole yelled out, "Robin!" as if they were old friends.  He just smiled and kept walking.

We then went down to explore Greenwich Village, but it was a last-minute decision and we didn't really know what we were doing, so we just wandered around and had dinner there, then headed back to see show #3, Catch Me If You Can (our favorite, hands down)!

We stayed after for autographs again, and this time we got Norbert Leo Butz's autograph, who I LOVE. He won a Tony for his role in the show, and he was AMAZING.  We also got Aaron Tveit's autograph, who played the role of Frank Abignale, Jr.

The next morning we got up and took the subway down to the Staten Island Ferry, which provided nice views of the city and the Statue of Liberty:

The plan was to take the ferry to Staten Island and then ride the same one back, but when we got there we had to get off the ferry and wait a whole 30 minutes for the next ferry.  We were really stressing about making it to the show on time! So we RAN off the boat when it got back to Manhattan, hailed a cab and told him to step on it! Thank goodness we made it to see show #4, Anything Goes:

After the show we stayed for autographs again.  I got a bunch of autographs, including Colin Donnell's, who played the role of Billy Crocker.  We really wanted to see Sutton Foster (Tony winner) and Joel Grey, but they didn't come out.  Double bummer!  Sutton Foster amazes me.  She does this huge, physically demanding tap number and then sings full out like it's nothing.  It doesn't even look like she's breathing heavily!  Amazing.

We had to stop and take a picture of the fire station right next to our hotel that we passed every day. I love this backdrop:

Nicole had a near death experience when she wandered in front of the fire trucks as they were trying to leave to save people from a burning building, but that's another story!

We had a nice, leisurely dinner before our final show. I say "leisurely" because apparently we forgot how to tell time and we were obscenely late for the play. SO embarrassed (so embarrassed I almost didn't tell you)! Anyway, our last show of the trip (#5) was The Normal Heart. I loved what I saw of it!

There were a ton of big names in the show, so we stayed after again to get autographs. I was able to get autographs from Joe Mantello (Tony winner), John Benjamin Hickey (Tony winner), Jim Parsons and Lee Pace. I really wanted to meet Luke Macfarlane, because I'm a huge fan of his character on Brothers and Sisters, but he ran off pretty quickly. Bummer!

We obviously had a fantastic time:

But then we had to go home (another obligatory picture):

We have already started talking about what we're going to do on our NEXT trip (I can't wait)!

Like I said, this post is a broad brush of our weekend.  I took lots of photos, including photos with some of the stars I got autographs from.  If you want to see them, check out my Photo Album!  If you need the code to get in, let me know!