29 Will Be a Tough One to Beat

Well, now that I'm sort of recovered from my birthday in New York City, I can tell all of you about it! I still can't believe that I was able to spend my birthday in THE most amazing city in the world. I just love that city and I love the fact that I currently live within a two hour train ride from there.

Which is exactly how we got there on Sunday. We took the 6:55 a.m. train and those of you who know me know that it must have been important to me if I was up and out the door at 6:00 a.m.

I think we look surprisingly awake for how early it was.

After downing a Rock Star on the trip, we arrived at Grand Central at 8:45 a.m., perfect time for breakfast. We took a cab to my favorite cafe in all of NYC - Cafe Lalo.

The have the best coffee.... mmm.

And they have some kick-ass champagne drinks. :)

We stayed there drinking coffee for a while, kicked back, just enjoying being there. I was seriously so happy. I was born to live in NYC, I think. Too bad I couldn't even afford to live in a closet there.

After breakfast we headed down to Riverside Park to visit the place where we got engaged. It was all in bloom and so beautiful! There was someone there picking weeds and we both think it's so cool that it's maintained by the community. Everyone pitches in to keep it so amazing. (By the way, I usually hate boring shots of flowers and such, but this is a special place for us, so bear with me.)

We plan to revisit this park each time we come into the city!

Next we headed toward Times Square, walking through Central Park to get there. I can't believe I didn't take any pictures in Central Park! The Aids Walk was taking place and there were TONS of people and lots of energy. We took a break on a bench at Strawberry Fields where we watched everyone fawn over John Lennon's memorial and listened to some awesome Beatles music performed by a guy with a guitar. (Said guitarist ended up sitting next to us, yelling and screaming about some tourists who had pissed him off. "I'm f**ing here for f**ing John, man, and they want to mess with ME?? I'm f**ing going to f*** them up and give them a REAL New York welcome!" I wanted to say, "Yeah, man, you're just like John, peace and love all the way." haha)

Of course we had to stop at Starbucks about a billion times.

And then we got to Times Square, where we were meeting Stuart at his very swanky, expensive hotel (he made his trip work related so his company would set him up. Nice!).

Joe in the swanky hotel.

This is how Stuart celebrates my birthday.

We had dinner reservations at this fabulous restaurant called Josie's West on the Upper West Side. It was vegetarian and vegan friendly, but also had sustainable meat options for Joe. It was a great find and we will definitely be going back. (Thank you Stuart for buying us dinner!)

I think you can tell I'm getting tired at this point.

We really wanted to take the 9:00 p.m. train back home, but dinner didn't even get over until 9:00, and then we decided to walk all the way back to Grand Central. I didn't want to leave, but I knew it was already going to be a tough day at work on Monday. We took the 10:22 p.m. train back, and after driving home from the station and taking Jackson out for a walk, we collapsed into bed at 2:00 a.m.

We were both so tired on Monday we couldn't even see straight, but it was worth it because it was...

the. best. birthday. ever!