Matthew and I met in New York City—we like to say that NYC is where all my dreams came true (it's true though). So for our 10th anniversary, I decided a great way to celebrate would be to go back to where it all began.
We ended up doing surprisingly few nostalgic things, and instead took the opportunity to visit like tourists with money (instead of poor student/entry-level professional, which we were when we lived there). We stayed in a historic hotel. It had a gorgeous atrium running down through the center with a huge skylight and beautiful wrought iron railings around each floor. It also had an old-timey dial on the first floor elevator to show which floor the elevator was at. And the bar/restaurant at the bottom was quintessentially New York, it seemed like a great place for young professionals to hang out on the weekend.
We flew in late Friday night (we may or may not have been swindled by the expensive "taxi" service...), then started on Saturday morning with brunch at a place near Union Square called La Boucherie. I was really interested in their Belgian waffles with caramel and cream. It was a bit chilly (summer doesn't really start till mid-June on the East Coast), but we sat kind of on the edge of the inside/outside, so we still got to have the open-air experience I was hoping for.
Next we went to Tiffany for my anniversary present: diamond earrings. The salesman offered me champagne while we shopped, and when I declined, he brought macarons instead, which was fun. Matthew was most impressed by the bathrooms and the Louis Vuitton building across the street, which was done up like a giant suitcase.
Matthew wanted to see our friends the Hills while we were in town, so we invited them to come to our first show, The Last Five Years (starring Nick Jonas) matinee. We met them at the theater and went to sushi for dinner afterward. Then they left on the train to go home (they live in Albany), and we headed over to the Rogers Theater for Hamilton! We had 4th-row seats, and it was everything I hoped for. There's really something about seeing the biggest shows in the theater they were designed for. It just has a different energy, and it's always amazing.
On Sunday we went to the newly minted NYC Visitors Branch. With the temple/stake center under construction, the smaller wards weren't able to absorb the visitor influx, so they created a dedicated branch for us lol. It was only an hour and was a testimony meeting. I told my story of how I was prompted to come to New York, since it seemed appropriate.
After church we walked over to Central Park (with the help of some ibuprofen on my part...). We wandered around the reservoir and through the Shakespeare Garden (near the Shakespeare in the Park stage) toward the lake where you can rent rowboats! The line was long enough when we got there that we started to wonder if we would still have time to do it before we had to be to the theater again for SIX. But our timing was impeccable, because it moved pretty steadily and by the time we got on the boats after half an hour, the line had doubled, and when we got back to return the boat, it had tripled.
The boat itself was just divine. Dressed up in our Sunday best made it feel very Jane Austen, and the whole thing was absolutely as romantic as it should be. It had been cloudy and drizzly off and on for the morning, but by the time we were out on the lake the sun was starting to come out. It was still quite breezy, but this was actually a good thing for Matthew, because he didn't get overly hot rowing the boat. At one point I hailed another couple who had an iPhone and (much to Matthew's horror) asked them to swap pictures. Airdrop is a marvel, and we just took pictures of each other and then rowed up close enough to touch phones. Matthew is a very competent rower, and we made our way around most of the lake within our allotted hour. The whole thing was just idyllic.
We didn't have time to eat lunch as we had to then rush to our show, but this was fine because we had a big dinner planned. I decided I wanted to eat at a three-Michelin-star restaurant—there are only eight in all of New York City—so I booked a table at a place called Daniel. Matthew wanted to try the tasting menu, even though it's 7+ courses, so we did. Dinner at a place like that is a whole experience. We had a team of about 4–5 waiters, and after each course two of them would come and whisk away our plates simultaneously, which was cool. My favorite dish was one that I probably wouldn't have otherwise tried (it's a set menu) called kampachi, which is a fancy Japanese white fish. It had this delicious puree that paired so nicely with the carrots that came with it, and the fish was surprisingly infused with quite a lot of flavor itself. Since it was our anniversary, they gave us a special little extra dessert, and they also offered us a tour of the kitchen, which was very neat! Matthew said it was boring because no one was frantically running around or screaming—all very well organized, lol.
After dinner, we went to Rockefeller Center to see the city from the top. I had bought the Express tickets because they allow you to go anytime you want instead of committing to a specific time (I wasn't sure how long dinner would take), but with the size of the line we scooted right past, we defnitely thought it was well worth the extra money, plus we made it just in time for sunset. It was a bit cloudy, but there were glass partitions around the tops of the walls that kept the space quite nice, temperature-wise, so it wasn't too breezy. We were also fortunate it didn't rain. But we got to see the city both in the light and in the dark, which was fun. It was all very romantic. We also, through a mishap with our photo pass that I had bought, got to take the "express" way down, as one of the photo operators personally escorted us, so we really just felt like VIPs the whole night.
On Monday morning, we went to the WTC memorial and then met up with Matthew's friend Carrie and had a breakfast/brunch with her. I had lemon ricotta pancakes, which honestly were a lot better than the waffles from Saturday, which hadn't been served with any syrup, so they just were a bit dry. Carrie then wandered with us over to see Matthew's school and Washington Park, where he proposed to me, and West 4th, where we got some nostalgic cupcakes and dollar pizza before heading out to the airport. We opted to take the subway back since we'd already spent a stupid amount on that taxi, and from our hotel was actually not nearly so long of a haul as it used to be from where we lived in Harlem. Matthew got to experience the Delta Sky Club at JFK, and in his words, "This is not good. Now I can never go back..."
