Lauren is a planner. She is good at it. She had a spreadsheet.

Unfortunately, all it took was an hour flight delay to remind us that life often gets in the way of the best-laid plans. Despite a dent in the plane ? we still managed to land in NYC around 10 am on Thursday. That meant we pretty much had the whole day to explore the city. Flying into New York was amazing. Even before you land you begin to get a sense of the city.

Landing in NYC

We got checked into the hotel and went to check out Times Square. So, Manhattan is about 13 miles long and contains about 1.6 million people. I am convinced at anyone time, most of them are in Times Square.

Pano shot of Times Square

We did the whole tourist thing and took a bunch of pictures. Batman, Ironman, Elsa, Elmo, the Snowman from Frozen- they were all there. Plus a couple half naked people and several current and future cult members.

Click the images below to see larger pictures

After walking around for a while, we stopped off and purchased our Metro Cards for the week. We took the train down to SoHo to a cool bike shop and walked around the Washington Square area. We tried to visit the NYU book store but they were closed doing inventory so we walked a little more before heading back towards the hotel.

We stayed on the south side of Times Square in the Garment District. There are literally fabric shops in every other building. On the way back, we came across a great little pub called Rattle and Hum West. We had a quick drink and went back to the room to change before heading to see the 9/11 museum.

Love birds

At least that was the *plan*.

See, about 7 weeks ago we began the process of requesting tickets to see “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon“. There is a lot that goes into it. You can do everything right and still not get tickets. Well, since we still had not heard back from the show we had more or less given up hope.

So, Jen hops in the shower to rinse off and I lay down on the bed to rest until I hear the phone ring. Lauren happened to check her email and WE GOT TICKETS! The only catch was we had to be there by 3:45 today.

It was 3:30 pm. ?

We had 15 minutes to make it about 15 blocks in the middle of the day. We had to run. So that is what we did.

I hollered at Jen, she jumped out of the shower and somehow was ready to be out the door in 2 minutes. We tore off down the street. I thought I was going to die- either of heat stroke or mowed down by a cabby.

We get to the studio with no time to spare. They ushered us into the audience holding room as we were catching our breath it became obvious something was off. Apparently, no one else sprinted through downtown to make it there. After cooling down a little we are brought onto the set and before you know it the show begins.

There are no pictures allowed so we weren’t able to take any but the show was great. Charlize Theron and Michael Phelps were the guests. The Roots were incredible. It was really one of the major highlights of the trip.

After the show, we hung out in the gift shop and made our way back towards the hotel. On the way, we discovered this great little hole in the wall restaurant called Lazzaro’s. We closed out a great day with some great pizza.