Sleeping on the Subway and Other Inexpensive Things to Do in NYC

Context: This post is about the third day (and second day in the city) of my second New York City trip.

"Listen to this address," Older Sister said to us when we were discussing our plans for moving our luggage from our hotel to her dorm room. "You'll never have another like it."

The address? 35 Fifth Avenue. That's where Older Sister's dorm is. Fifth Avenue in NYC has a certain prestige, so she was right. I'll never have another address like the one I had for the three days that I spent living with Older Sister.

35 Fifth Avenue, though, was more easily bragged of than reached. My younger sisters and I awoke fairly early on Thursday morning, despite having stayed up to eat dinner at Carmine's. We packed up everything we had and ventured down into the subway system of New York City.

Little Sister was pulling her suitcase and Baby Sister's. Baby Sister was carrying her pillow and pulling my suitcase. I was carrying my pillow and pulling the humongous, unwieldy suitcase. Getting that suitcase down the stairs into the subway station is an experience I'd rather not repeat. At least Little Sister and I were experienced in getting luggage into the subway station proper. After purchasing subway passes, we sent Little Sister through the turnstile first. Then we passed the suitcases to Little Sister before Baby Sister and I joined her on the other side.

The subway system was as grimy as last time but considerably more warm. Someone had warned me that July in New York City is blazing, so on a whim I'd put one of the fans that Porch had given me in my purse. Whenever we had to wait for a subway in the oppressive heat, I'd whip that puppy out and fan my sisters and myself.

After this particular subway trip, we emerged near Washington Square Park. (Getting that suitcase up the stairs and out of the subway station is another experience that I'd rather not repeat.) Then we essentially wandered around in search of 35 Fifth Avenue. I say "wandered" because Little Sister's iPhone suddenly became very confused.

Things Little Sister Said While Looking for Older Sister's Dorm:

"We need to turn around."

"I think we need to go the other way."

"What does that sign say?" (Little Sister has bad vision, but she doesn't wear contacts and she only wears glasses when driving and at movies/musicals.)

"What does that sign say?"

"Maybe we should call Older Sister."

I didn't mind any of this in the least, because we'd wandered into Greenwich Village Historic District. Or so I gathered from all the signs that read, "Greenwich Village Historic District." Every time Little Sister asked me what a sign said, I took great relish in responding by pronouncing "Greenwich" as "Grenwich." Also, the buildings were beautiful.

"I like this part of New York City a lot better," Baby Sister said as we hauled our luggage through the peaceful streets.

In the end, we found our way to 35 Fifth Avenue. Older Sister was waiting for us; she helped us get our guest passes at the front desk.

Older Sister's dorm room was tiny and cramped and had no air conditioning, and the elevator was tiny and cramped and slow, but the lobby was to die for. I began to wonder if it was a hotel right away because the architectural style of the lobby was just like the architectural style of the lobby in the hotel in the Tower of Terror ride in Disneyland's sister park, California Adventure. Sure enough, Older Sister confirmed that the building had once been a hotel. Research showed that this hotel (the Grosvenor Hotel) was built around the same time when the Tower of Terror hotel was supposed to have been built, thus the similar styles. Disney always does their research.

After dropping off our luggage at Older Sister's place, it was time for Older Sister to go to work and for my sisters and me to go to Brooklyn!

That's right, we were taking Baby Sister to Brooklyn. We would have loved to do the Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour again, but we were on a tight budget. Most of what we did had to be dirt cheap. That meant no tours, no museums, not even the Statue of Liberty. Instead, we were going to spend a quiet, inexpensive morning playing on the beach at Coney Island.

Here, I'll break down some of the ways we cut costs that day.

Don't:
Buy a townhouse on Fifth Avenue: $$$
Instead:
Stay on the floor of a Fifth Avenue dorm: Free!

Don't:
Sleep on a tour bus going to Coney Island: $$
Instead:
Sleep on the N Train going to Coney Island: $

(Don't worry, Mom, I made sure that the three of us were never all asleep at the same time. I dozed only when Little Sister was awake.)

Don't:
Ride rides or play games at Coney Island: $$
Instead:
Play on the beach at Coney Island: Free!

We jumped in and out of the waves and took pictures of ourselves with a selfie stick that Older Sister lent us. We also held a funeral for a dead crab that we found. I'd never been in the Atlantic Ocean before. It was considerably more tired-seeming than the Pacific Ocean, like maybe the Atlantic had seen too many tragedies and had grown weary of life. And I kept thinking about how maybe some of the water that was touching us had also touched the ruins of the Titanic.

Don't:
Eat an expensive lunch: $$ to $$$
Instead:
Split a $14 margherita pizza at the Coney Island location of Grimaldi's: $14

Although Little Sister and I also bought root beer. When we were sitting down, Baby Sister was all, "Wait, shouldn't we get something else on this pizza besides cheese?" and Little Sister and I were all, "No! This is the way that pizza was meant to be eaten." I like to think that we convinced Baby Sister to see it our way. She seemed to enjoy the pizza, at any rate.

Grimaldi's margherita pizza and fine Olde Brooklyn root beer.

Don't:
Sit down in a restaurant on Wall Street and order something so that you can use the "paying customers only" bathroom: $$
Instead:
Use the bathroom at Wall Street's Variety Cafe: Free!

On our way back from Coney Island, we suddenly decided that it might be a good use of our time to take Baby Sister to Wall Street. The only problem was that I needed to use a bathroom. Little Sister was all, "I'm sure we'll be able to find a bathroom!" However, there aren't a lot of public-type bathrooms around the city. Last year, Little Sister and Glory went to the courthouse in hopes that they would be able to use their bathrooms. In order to enter said courthouse, they had to relinquish their phones, and even after that it took them a considerable while to find the bathrooms.

I wracked my brain to think of a place on Wall Street that might have accessible bathrooms. Then I remembered the Variety Cafe, where we ate lunch last year! Because of the way it was set up, there was no way the cafeteria-style restaurant could have a "paying customers only" rule. And sure enough, I was able to use the bathroom there, no problem.

Don't:
Completely trash your family's fortune and reputation in a wild goose chase of historical clues that eventually lead you to some crypts beneath Trinity Church: Family fortune; family reputation; $$$ for gas, money, food, and gear to steal the Declaration of Independence.
Instead:
Visit Trinity Church as a tourist: Free!

There are lots of fun things to do at Trinity Church! You can stand where Queen Elizabeth II once stood. 

"In this spot stood Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her gracious visit. 9 July 1976. His Royal Highness the Prince Philip stood nearby."

I find this plaque to be hilarious, first of all because the Trinity Church people marked the exact spot where the queen stood but apparently didn't care where Prince Philip was standing. Secondly, I'm amused because Trinity Church is a historical landmark of the United States of America, and the United States of America is supposed to collectively be over the whole royalty thing...at least over it enough to not devote plaques to royalty on our historical sites.

I also mentioned last year that Trinity Church has a graveyard with some very, very old graves. Apparently, when they started the graveyard they did not foresee the possibility of tourists over the next 300+ years, because the layout does not seem to have been planned accordingly. The stepping stones leading around to the other side of the graveyard included an actual horizontal gravestone. I guess that this guy was the only person buried where they wanted to put the stepping stones for tourists, so they decided to just encourage people to walk on his grave instead of finding another place for a path.

Oh, and last time we didn't get a chance to see Alexander Hamilton's grave, remember? Well now, thanks to those crazy Hamilton kids, we couldn't miss it. There were tons of flowers and wreaths and things all over it, and a big tour group was standing right near it. And part of me was all, "Hello? Did any of you even know Alexander Hamilton existed a year ago?" Because I knew all about A-Ham before it was cool. Because I'm a history hipster. (Hipstory?)

Don't:
Visit the 9/11 museum: $$ and a couple hours of your time. (At least, don't visit it if you're trying to save money. It's definitely worth visiting if you have the time and are able to spring the cash.)
Instead:
Visit the 9/11 memorials: Fifteen minutes of your time.

It was just as heartbreaking but a lot more crowded this time around. Lots of tourists were setting their bags and things on the memorial, which I was not okay with.

After our jaunt to Wall Street, it was time to get ready for Fiddler on the Roof and, after, Umami Burger. Neither of those things was exactly cheap. Umami Burger was not worth the price, but Fiddler definitely was. I love that show; it was the first musical I was ever in. Also, some of my Jewish family members lived in Russia around that time, and the musical gives me an idea of what their lives would have been like. The way they staged this production of the show made thinking about my family history easy; they had the actor playing Tevye start and end the show in modern clothes, reading from what appeared to be an ancestor's journal. Also, Older Sister kept praising the performance of Adam Kantor as Motel. He did do a really good job; when Tevye yelled at him he actually crawled under the milk cart to get away. It was glorious.

One last thing about living large in NYC on a modest budget...if you opt to sleep on the floor of someone's dorm, the dorm resident you are staying with may have a roommate. Older Sister had a roommate. At least, she said she did, but we never actually saw this roommate of hers. The roommate was supposed to be moving out over the weekend, and when we came home on Thursday night some of her stuff was gone and a half-drunk latte (at least I think it was a latte; I'm not really familiar with the coffees) was sitting on her desk. I guess she only occasionally dropped by the dorm but actually lived with her significant other.

We rolled out our pads and sleeping bags, plumped up our pillows, and settled down for a long night's sleep on a wooden floor.

It was not very comfortable, but it was very cost-efficient.

Famiglia

Context: This post is about the last day of our New York City trip.

A word before we begin.

I like to travel. I want to see the world. But I will never be one of those true adventurers who can leave home for weeks at a time or who can go away to someplace where you can't call or email or write.

I discovered this when I left home all by myself, no family or friends, for the first time. I took my life savings and went to Europe for two and a half weeks. I loved it; oh, how I loved it. But the whole time, with each experience that I had, I couldn't help but think things like, "Little Sister would love this," and "I wish Mom were here," and "I want to show this to Baby Brother." I became my family's eyes; I wrote them long, detailed emails about Europe so that they could experience it, too. I got souvenirs and chocolate for everybody. When I bought a scarf in Italy, one of the other girls on the trip asked me whom it was for. "It's for me," I said.

"Good," she said, "because I don't think you've bought anything for yourself this entire trip. It seems like everything you've bought is for someone else."

The point is, I've discovered that I like my family too much to ever leave them for long or go too far away. And while New York City was different--part of my family was there, and I called and FaceTimed the rest of them often--I still thought of my siblings and parents often and saw so much of the city through their eyes. And as our trip drew to a close, I found that I was ready to go home.

So. Our last 24 hours in New York City started with a Broadway tour. We saw a ton of theaters. We learned about the history of West Side Story, one of my favorite musicals. Apparently, when it first opened, the kind of gangsters on which the characters were based came to the show. They were offended by the rhythmic, imitation gang speak that the creators of the show developed in lieu of using curses and real slang. "We don't talk like that!" they said. "We don't dance!" And to prove that they were tough, they broke into a costume shop and killed some people. These murders were then also turned into a musical, according to our tour guide. Pretty interesting stuff. My only question is how poor, first- and second-generation immigrant teenagers could afford tickets to a Broadway show in the first place.

We also learned about the brewing possibility of Wicked someday being turned into an animated film, an idea that I strongly approve of. Of course, on modern Broadway, you can't avoid talking about the musical The Book of Mormon. And of course, once our tour guide started, it came up that the four of us were Mormons. Surprise, fellow tour group people! Our tour guide gave us one of the more unusual compliments I've ever received, which is that the people of Broadway really respect the LDS Church because of the way we've handled the existence of a musical that is pretty offensive. The Church has taken advantage of the negative publicity and found ways to make it positive publicity, including taking out an ad in the program and sending missionaries to the theatre with copies of the actual Book of Mormon.

After the tour, dinner at Carmine's. Dr. Godfather recommended this place to us. They serve Italian food there, family-style. So for the second night in a row, we sat down to delicious Italian food: a big plate of angel hair pasta in oil and garlic and a platter of chicken piccata.

Our servers were friendly and funny. One of them, when we told him we were from Utah, made a joke that he could marry all four of us. He told us when we ordered the garlic pasta that it would discourage us from kissing, but made an additional joke that he would give each of us a kiss before we left. If he was our age, this would have been creepy, but he was more of a grandfather age and delivered these jokes in a way that just made us laugh.

As we got ready to leave, he said, "I told you I'd give you each a kiss!" and handed us some Hershey kisses.

What was there to do after dinner? Why, a show, of course.

We'd originally planned to go to only three shows. But as we narrowed down our choices, Older Sister cried, "I just want to see more!"

So we chose four shows. Then we bumped that number up to five. But after the tickets were bought, Older Sister said, "I really wish we could see another one."

That was one of the reasons why she was so loathe to go to Queens; she wanted enough time on Wednesday to stand in line at TKTS to get discount tickets. But on Tuesday, at the end of our SoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy tour, our tour guide mentioned that she knew an app called TodayTix that lets you purchase discounted tickets without waiting in line.

Older Sister fell in love. Madly, deeply in love. And so it was that her new love, the TodayTix app, got us rather inexpensive tickets to Something Rotten! As in, in the state of Denmark.

Something Rotten! is a brand-new musical, and it's great. Great actors, including Christian Borle and Brian D'arcy James. Great costumes, great set, great music. Great concept. And it was wildly, incredibly, almost unbearably clever. My one complaint is that the show goes out of its way to make inappropriate jokes. What I mean by that is that if I go see a show about, say, two people having an affair, then that show is obviously going to be inappropriate. I should know what I'm getting myself into, and vulgarity is to be expected. It's another thing entirely when I go see a show about subject matter that isn't necessarily inappropriate and the writers feel the need to riddle it with dirty jokes. Does vulgarity have to be introduced into everything?

Either way, Something Rotten! was our last big hurrah in New York. The next morning, we packed up, checked out, and did one last round of leisurely sightseeing.

Our last real stop was Carlo's Bakery. Carlo's Bakery is run by a man named Buddy Valastro and his family. You may otherwise recognize him as the star of Cake Boss. His original bakery is in New Jersey, but they have a second location on Times Square.

We'd passed the bakery a million times over the week we were in New York. "Stop in," the sign read. "You're famiglia!"

That sign had two effects on me. First, I was obviously thrilled that Buddy Valastro would consider me to be part of his family, because the Valastro family seems to be even more obnoxiously wonderful than the Obnoxiouses. The second effect was to make me think about mia famiglia and how much they love Cake Boss and how they would all give, like, their left hands and probably their earlobes or something to join us eating cannoli in Carlo's Bakery.

After Carlo's, it was time to bid farewell to New York City. We reversed our trip from our first day in the city: took our luggage to the subway, selected the train that would take us to Jamaica Station, took an air train to the airport, and boarded our flight back to Salt Lake City. By this time, we were experts in the public transportation system, and nothing untoward happened except that one of security people at the airport grew suspicious of my ankle and pulled me out of line so that she could pat it down. All she found was my polka dot sock.

And so we said goodbye to New York City. There's nothing like it. But then we headed home, and there's nothing like home, either.

We arrived before midnight. Glory left with her boyfriend; our dad picked us and our suitcases up in the family Mormon Assault Vehicle. We burst into the house. Mom was waiting up; so were the children. There were souvenirs all around, almost a hundred dollars' worth of birthday presents for Baby Sister, and a box of cookies from Carlo's bakery for everyone. There were hugs. There was excited chatter. There was laughter.

And so ends our trip to New York. P.S. Older Sister is already talking about when she's going back.

Calling the Shots

Context: This post is about the eighth day of my New York City trip, which was our seventh day in the city.

It's been a crummy year so far.

My life hasn't been the hardest life; my struggles aren't the hardest struggles. I've had some difficult experiences over the years, but much of what I've lost or given up is made up to me in other ways. I've truly been blessed for my difficulties.

However, I've never had a year quite like 2015. 2015 was bad coming out of the starting gate. Problem after problem has been thrown at me, and the minute I get one problem into a somewhat manageable state, something else is added to the mix. Also, I have not seen many blessings come out of these difficulties...yet. I'm sure there's a purpose to all of this, but it looks like I will have to wait for that purpose to be made manifest.

In the meantime, one of the best ways for me to get through a spot of trouble is to look or plan for things to look forward to. I can get a lot of emotional currency out of the joy of anticipation.

Before the New York City trip, I looked forward to that. I looked forward to the food, the culture, the excitement of going someplace that I'd never, ever been. I especially looked forward to the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image.

When we first started planning our trip to New York, my sisters and I made a long list of everything we wanted to do while we were there. I chose the Jim Henson exhibit, which wasn’t open yet, but they promised that, upon the opening in March 2015, exhibit visitors could see 500 Jim Henson artifacts including 25 puppets including Gobo Fraggle!!!

My sisters agreed; Little Sister because she loves Muppets too, Older Sister because she knew I really wanted to go. However, Older Sister was concerned because the museum was in Queens, which is a ways from Times Square. She was so concerned that, from that point until the day before we were scheduled to go to the museum, Older Sister informed anybody and everybody who would listen to her just how far away the Museum of the Moving Image was.

To our parents: “Awkward Mormon Girl really wants to go to this museum that’s far away from everything else.”

To Glory: “The other museum that we’re going to is in Queens, and it’s not by anything else. We’re going because there’s an exhibit there that Awkward Mormon Girl wants to see.”

To Peeta: “We’re going to the Museum of the Moving Image, which is a little far, because Awkward Mormon Girl really wants to go.”

But these comments couldn't ruin my excitement. Nothing could. The exhibit became my happy place. In the months leading up to the trip, each time something difficult happened, I would think, "Jim Henson. Muppets. Fraggles. I am going to see Gobo Fraggle." And nothing could take that away from me.

On Wednesday morning, I got up early and put on my Wembley Fraggle shirt. As I put on my jeans with one hand, I used the other hand to look up information about the exhibit on my iPod.

Some fifteen minutes later, I was frozen in the exact same position, one leg in my jeans, one leg out, staring at the iPod screen.

My sisters and Glory got up and prepared for the day. As Older Sister began to make her usual comments about how far we had to go, I blurted out something like, "The exhibit opening was delayed. It's not open." And then I started to cry. In a year of disappointments, it was just one disappointment too many.

Then I flung myself upon my and Little Sister's hotel bed and gave up on life. At least, I gave up on going downstairs for breakfast. Because, as Anne Shirley says, how can one eat when they're in the depths of despair?

My sisters and Glory were sad on my behalf. Before they went to get breakfast, Older Sister said, "We'll do whatever you want when we get back."

I unenthusiastically flipped through my guidebook. Jewish Children's Museum? In Brooklyn, which is almost as far away as Queens. Children's Television Workshop? Apparently they don't do tours. What in the name of Jim Henson was there to do in New York City? Answer: everything. But what was there for a disappointed girl in her twenties who has very specific interests?

Then I remembered something that I wanted to see.

When Older Sister, Little Sister, and Glory returned, I made a grand announcement in the style of Sokka: "I WOULD LIKE TO SPEND MY VACATION AT THE LIBRARY!" Except I made this announcement without yelling. Or pointing my finger dramatically in the air. Or saying those words. But in my mind, it was in the style of Sokka.

Instead, I very normally told them that I wanted to go the New York Public Library. And to the NBC store to look for a birthday gift for Baby Sister. And then, we had to stop and have an interesting, real lunch--not a tiny, hurried lunch.

Older Sister, our leader, agreed to my terms. She also suggested that we go to the Magnolia Bakery, a place that I'd heard had amazing cupcakes but which we previously had not had time to go to, and to the American Girl Doll Place.

So, over the course of just a few hours, we did the Make Awkward Mormon Girl Feel Better Tour of New York City.

First stop: Magnolia Bakery. Older Sister seemed to be skeptical of my assurances that this bakery had famously delicious cupcakes. So it was validating to arrive at the bakery and learn that they had a separate line just for selling cupcakes. I bought a chocolate cupcake; Little Sister bought a coconut cream cupcake. The workers boxed our cupcakes in adorable little boxes. We ate them later, back in the hotel room. My cupcake was simple, but amazing. The chocolate buttercream frosting was to die for.

Second stop: the NBC store in the Rockefeller Center. Supposedly, they sell a lot of cool TV show stuff, but there wasn't much. This may have been due to the fact that about half the store seemed to be roped off for some reason. I did not get Baby Sister a present there. However, in the Rockefeller Center, Older Sister and Glory decided to drop in what would be aptly called The Most Expensive Chocolate Shop Ever. They bought a $5 macaron that they then split. The shop workers, probably feeling sorry for how poor we were, also offered us each a small sample of a rich, dark chocolate.

Third stop: The American Girl Doll Place. I wished that I was still ten years old, or that I'd at least brought my American Girl doll to New York with me, because this place was great. You could shop for your doll, get your hair done with your doll, and buy both real treats and plastic doll treats at the little bakery. There were even doll holders in the bathroom stalls. We looked at eating lunch at the cafe, but a plate of food was almost as much as my doll Molly's school outfit cost.

Fourth stop: the New York Public Library!!! The famous lions were featured in the Jim Henson Company show Between the Lions, which meant that it was a vaguely Muppet-related place. Also, libraries and I are like chocolate and hazelnut. Which is to say that we are a delicious combination that works well together. I took a picture with one of the stone lions. What I really wanted was a picture of the whole front of the library, but we were too close. Also, this guy complimented me on my Wembley Fraggle shirt, which I said thanks to, which he took as a sign that I wanted him to tell me all about Greenpeace. We fled into the library to escape him, and also because, again, libraries.

After that, I reminded Older Sister that part of the Make Awkward Mormon Girl Feel Better Tour of New York City was to get lunch. Real lunch. She protested that she wanted quickie lunch, but I reminded her that I had specified lunch up front as one of my needs. So we ate at this place called The Kati Roll Company, which was basically Indian food but in wraps. The things you find in New York City. We ate these wraps sitting at an outdoor market area, where we also obtained some more (cheaper) macarons.

Thus ended the Make Awkward Mormon Girl Feel Better Tour of New York City. It didn't make up for my disappointment, but I so appreciated the efforts of my sisters and Glory. And (supposedly) the Jim Henson exhibit opens before the end of this year, so if I ever go to NYC again, I can check it out. It's something to look forward to.

Only in New York

Context: This post is about the seventh day of my New York City trip, which was our sixth day in the city.

When I last left you, Older Sister, Little Sister, Glory, Peeta, and I were standing on top of the Rockefeller Center.

That was Monday night. We bid Peeta farewell, walked back to our hotel, and slept. On Tuesday, we went on a walking tour of SoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy. At least, that's what it was advertised as. In reality, it could have been the Tour of Death. Our scratchy-voiced tour guide pointed out the building on the site of the murder that precipitated the first recorded murder trial in U.S. history. She pointed out the SoHo apartment where Heath Ledger was found dead. She showed us the Bloody Angle, a hooked little street notorious back when the ax gangs terrorized the underground passages of Chinatown. She told us stories about Mafia killings, except she informed us that throughout the tour she was going to refer to the Mafia as "the Family" to avoid the ire of an elderly lady who apparently roams the streets of Little Italy looking for people who are talking about the Mafia so that she can shove her little dog in their faces and yell, "You're being disrespectful!" The tour guide's strategy seemed to work, for we avoided an encounter with said elderly lady, but every so often our tour guide would also talk about real families, as in saying things like, "When my family visits..." Some of the other people on the tour spoke English as a second language, and I wondered if they understood the distinction.

Oh, also, in between the official tour narration the tour guide told a story about a friend of hers who bought a house in Brooklyn. The friend was excited because there was a great garden space out back where plants were growing like crazy. Long story short, the friend was digging around in the garden and uncovered a human body.

Only in New York, folks. And only in New York do you get the chic of Soho mashed up against a little piece of Italy and then you turn the corner and surprise! Leftover Chinese New Year decorations everywhere.

SoHo is SoHo; I'm not sure what I would compare it to. I also have no real frame of reference for Chinatown, but I had an excellent time there. There were wares everywhere. Spices, seafood, silk dresses with mandarin collars. We bought souvenirs there; Glory was brave enough to actually bargain and haggle about the prices. I ate two kinds of dumplings there, fried pork dumplings and boiled seafood dumplings. I've never been a huge fan of dumplings, but Pepper, who is part Chinese, insists that dumplings/potstickers are the best and most authentic of Chinese fare. So I've been trying to get more into them. The ones I had were excellent.

What I do have a frame of reference for is Little Italy. I am pleased to tell you that Little Italy is a lot like Italy, just...little. We ate cannolis there, and they tasted like legitimate Italian cannolis. The gelato tasted like the gelato I ate every day during the two and a half weeks I was in Europe; the chocolate chip gelato in Little Italy was even called "stracciatella" like it is in real Italy. The men were flirtatious: as we walked through the streets, the ones advertising their restaurants called out to us, calling us "bellas."

We chose to eat dinner at a restaurant called La Bella Vita, where we were served the kind of Italian food you can't get in Hometown. There were even baskets of bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar at our table. "Only in Italy," I would have said before, but also, I now saw, in New York.

The final show that we had tickets for was Finding Neverland, a musical adaptation of the movie starring Matthew Morrison aka the guy from Glee and Kelsey Grammer aka the voice of Vlad from Anastasia. After our early, delicious dinner in Little Italy, we went back to our hotel, changed, and set out for Finding Neverland.

As a collective piece of art, Finding Neverland had a lot of issues. Mostly script issues. But individual parts of the show were astounding. The actors did a good job. Kelsey Grammer particularly was impeccable. There was a beautiful shadow dance scene, a song called "Play" that I fell in love with, and a perfect, perfect death scene for Sylvia. Peter Pan leads her out of the nursery window, leaving behind her shawl. The shawl was caught up in a mini cyclone of wind and pixie dust glitter, circling slowly, hauntingly. Perfect. Perfect. And only in New York.

That was Tuesday. The next day was Wednesday, the day we were going to see the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image. We would see artifacts that had belonged to a great artist. We would see Fraggle puppets.

What a marvelous city! Only in New York could there be a thing like this exhibit. I couldn't wait.

The Lost Boys

Grown-ups don't have summer vacation, which means that grown-ups have to take time off work to go camping, which means that grown-ups who don't take time off work to go camping don't get to go camping.

Using this linear reasoning, I was able to designate myself as a grown-up who did not get to go camping. But I did take a break from being a grown-up long enough to visit the campground and play our Peter Pan game for a few hours.

Playing Peter Pan is as formulaic as an episode of Phineas and Ferb. First Peter Pan (that's me) leads the Lost Boys in building a house for Wendy (Little Sister). Then the Lost Boys and Tinker Bell (Ginger Cousin) go to their hideout and make themselves beds of fresh grass. Then we explore.

When Little Sister and I arrived at the campsite with Older Sister and Glory, daylight was short. John (Little Brother) and Tootles (Baby Sister) had already led the others in building Wendy's house at the traditional site. They did this with a combination of branches and foliage, and I must say, it was a mighty fine house indeed. They had also made all the beds and spruced up the hideout.

The Lost Boys and Tinker Bell then brought us presents. Wildflowers for Wendy, and a weathered animal bone for me.

Then we tromped through the woods and sang and explored.

When we first started playing Peter Pan, none of the children were very old. It was more of a mass baby-sitting job for me and my sisters than anything. A baby-sitting job in the woods. With streams to fall in and rocks to trip on and children running around me while I'm trying to fulfill their request to carve their names in a tree with a pocket knife. 'Twas, in a word, unsafe.

Apart from instituting rules about where the little children could go without supervision, we developed a series of communications we could use to call out to one another. This made it so we could explore the woods without losing anyone.

"Sound off" means that everyone has to respond with a special sound-off song. We keep singing it until we find each other.

"Bangerang," means "I see you."

If you crow, it means "I'm in danger and need help."

"Hook, hook, where's the hook?" means that you see Captain Hook.

"Rufio!" is a cry of exhilaration.

This is how whole new languages are made, friends. We communicate this way as easily as we communicate in normal English.

We tromped through our hideout and though Pixie Hollow, the Mermaid Lagoon, and Camp Wanahakalugi. After wood-tromping, we had a council of Lost Boys. Then we ate dinner with the natives (the chief aka Dad and Tiger Lily aka my aunt) and the pirates (Captain Hook aka my uncle and Smee aka Mom).

Then the pine cone war.

A pine cone war is exactly what it sounds like. Hook, Smee, the chief, and Tiger Lily sneak up on us and throw pine cones at us. We throw pine cones back. Whoever surrenders loses and is branded, in the words of John Darling, "a cowardly custard." Being a cowardly custard is a bad thing, because although everyone likes custard, nobody likes cowards.

Determined not to be a cowardly custard, John/Little Brother and Cubby/Monkey Cousin developed a pine cone war strategy. Last year, our foes snuck up on us Lost Boys through Camp Wanahakalugi. That time, the Lost Boys really lost. So this year, John Napoleon Darling lived up to his middle name by ingeniously and efficiently splitting our forces. He sent Cubby to the entrance by Camp Wanahakalugi, took Slightly (Pixie Cousin) with him to defend the hideout, and left the rest of us on the front lines. John repurposed several of our usual Lost Boy commands for the battle. "Squdge," meant "Go to the front lines." "Rufio," meant "Join Cubby," and "Bangerang," meant "Cubby, join us." As you can see, we are running out of Peter Pan words that Lost Boys might say. "Faith, trust, and pixie dust," don't quite suit.

Before and after dinner, we stashed up caches of pine cones throughout the woods so that we would never be without ammunition. We dressed in clothes that were gray, green, and brown so that we blended in. I filled up the pocket and the hood of my hoodie with pine cones and smeared ash from the cooking fire on my face. We were ready... ready for everything to go as planned.

Of course, nothing went as planned. Just before the war started, Michael (Baby Brother) fell and scraped his leg and had to be administered to. No sooner had Michael returned to us than Cubby screeched, "Bangerang!" from his station near Camp Wanahakalugi.

"Already?" we cried. John, Tootles, and Slightly rushed to Cubby's aid. I think Wendy rushed to hide behind a tree. Tink, Michael, and Nibs (Baby Cousin) bravely stayed behind to help me defend the front lines, because we were being attacked from that side, too!

We threw pine cones with all our might, but the enemy advanced. They discovered our caches and started throwing our store of pine cones at us! Nibs tripped, landed hard, and defected into the comforting arms of Tiger Lily. It was chaos.

Chaos, however, must favor Peter Pan, because we won. We herded Hook, Smee, the chief and Tiger Lily into a clearing, then surrounded them and pelted them with pine cones. When Nibs saw how much fun we were having, she defected back to us.

"We surrender!" cried the cowardly custards that we had just beaten like...well, like custard.

I crowed. The Lost Boys crowed. It can be nice to not be grown up.

In Which the Tourists Become the Tour Guides

Context: This post is about the sixth day of my New York City trip, which was our fifth day in the city.

On Sunday night, Dr. Godfather texted Older Sister and mentioned that his best friend's son had just moved to New York City for an accounting internship and that the kid was nervous about the whole thing. Dr. Godfather asked if we would be so kind as to meet up with his best friend's son the next evening and take him sightseeing.

Now, Dr. Godfather has worked with our mom for ages, he's an especial friend of our family, and, as a former native of New York City, he offered us extensive advice in planning our trip. We felt obliged to help him out, but that obligation didn't keep Older Sister from freaking out.

"What if Dr. Godfather's best friend's son is weird? What if he's a creep? What if he's really awkward?" We listened to her worries on Monday morning as we all prepared for the day.

After a breakfast graciously provided by our hotel, we took the subway to Battery Park. Near Battery Park, we boarded a ferry heading for the Statue of Liberty. The sky was gray--not rainy, but oppressive in its coloring. It was a little claustrophobic, like the curved dome of the IMAX screen at the Clark Planetarium. And Lady Liberty was, well, green. Smaller than expected. Difficult to see up close. But the ferry ride was lovely all the same.

The second, and final, ferry stop was at Ellis Island.

I once visited Dachau in Germany. The misery that place had seen was palpable. I could feel it everywhere. Likewise, last summer, my family visited the martyrdom site of the prophet Joseph Smith. Once again, I could feel the tragedy in the air. Whatever your personal beliefs may be, innocent men cut down in their prime is always a tragedy.

For some reason, I was expecting to feel that at Ellis Island. I'm not sure why. People did die there, and some families suffered the personal tragedy of parting forever when unhealthy members were sent back to the old country. But a lot of good happened at Ellis Island, too. As not-so-great as the United States could be in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was infinitely better than what many people left behind. Parts of Ellis Island were definitely unfair and unpleasant, but the overall feeling I got from its halls was hope.

We did a walking tour of the entire museum. This was no small feat, considering we'd pretty much walked the length of Central Park the day before. The end of the tour found us collapsed on a wooden bench in the long upstairs room, listening to the description of the Kissing Post without actually walking over to see it.

We'd estimated that Ellis Island would take up most of our day, but in reality they only have the one building open for exploration. It was not quite lunchtime when we finished our sightseeing and caught the ferry back to Battery Park.

Earlier, we'd seen food stands in Battery Park selling churros. Now that we were done with our tour, we decided to purchase some. Eagerly anticipating the joy of hot fried dough coated in cinnamon and sugar, we forked over our money to the churro stand guy.

So what are churros like in New York City? Well, NYC is famous for all kinds of food: the best cheesecake, the best sushi, the best coal-fire pizza, Manhattan chowder, black-and-white cookies. But they aren't famous for churros, and that's because New York City churros are the worst.

Not joking. It was the worst churro I'd ever had. Maybe New York City lacks sufficient Southwest influence, but they don't seem to understand the concept of fried dough. Our churros were baked, dry, and heavy. They had cream in the middle, which was a nice idea in theory but which didn't really work, and there was only a little sugar sprinkled on top. There was no cinnamon. There was no hot, dripping, greasy goodness. Our disappointment was tantamount.

Little Sister got a chocolate churro with an Oreo cream dipping sauce. She gave me half of hers, and I gave her half of mine. Hers was better than mine, but it was still a blight on the hallowed name of churro.

We then forsook Battery Park and its terrible churros in favor of Wall Street. Stock market Wall Street. Let's-occupy-it Wall Street. National Treasure "heere on the wall" Wall Street. In fact, we stopped at Trinity Church. Whether there actually are catacombs with secret passages beneath this church, I do not know, but we examined the burial grounds behind the church. I walked around three-fourths of the cemetery, appreciating the history and thinking quiet thoughts. The next day, I learned that Alexander Hamilton is buried in the fourth of the cemetery that I didn't explore. I will forever regret not seeing his grave, because Alexander Hamilton is a boss.

We decided to eat lunch on Wall Street, which is fancier than it sounds. Our joint of choice bore the name "The Variety Café," which it lived up to exceedingly well. There was a buffet of all kinds of hot food, including several different kinds of Asian cuisine (score!). There was also soup, sandwiches, salad, drinks, desserts, and so on and so forth. The other diners included what looked like business people, with their slacks and ties and laptops, and the staff included a friendly soup guy who asked us where we were from and told us about his experience skiing in Alta.

After lunch, the 9/11 Memorial. There, I found the misery that Ellis Island lacked.

9/11 is an American tragedy that I actually lived through. I remember the panic and the general confusion of a nation aghast. I remember seeing things on TV that I didn't understand but which people told me that I would remember for the rest of my life and that I should share with my children and grandchildren.

Now I was up close and personal.

Older Sister accompanied Glory in her meandering while Little Sister and I went on ahead. The museum descends into the foundations of the original World Trade Center, so down we climbed, meeting horror after horror after horror. Twisted wreckage; children's clothes collected from the downed planes; papers that floated on the wind from the gaping holes in the towers.

I got sniffly as a matter of course; Little Sister was still in the grip of her cold so she was extra sniffly. In the middle of the museum was a labyrinth-like structure that had a display that told the entire story of 9/11. It was very cool, but difficult to navigate.

Towards the end, Little Sister said, "Hic." Which looks harmless enough in print but which was actually a big ginormous hiccup. Little Sister had suddenly contracted a case of the loudest hiccups the world has ever heard. Ridiculousness ensued as we tried to find an exit so that we could rush out and leave people to their quiet personal mourning.

Our plans that night were to eat dinner at the Shake Shack and take in the view from the Top of the Rock. With much reluctance, Older Sister invited Dr. Godfather's best friend's son aka Peeta to join us for dinner and our tourist excursion.

Peeta said he would head to the Shake Shack and that we would know him because he was wearing a suit. Sure enough, when we arrived at the line stretching out of the Shake Shack and into the streets of New York, there was a guy in a suit saving us a spot halfway through the line.

They don't call me Awkward Mormon Girl for nothing. I find interacting with other humans to be quite awkward, so I was surprised at how well all of us got along with Peeta. He chatted with us amiably as we waited in line and ate our food (my burger was too salty; my concrete was to die for).

On the way out of the restaurant, Little Sister got the hiccups again. An extremely alarmed Shake Shack worker thought she was dying and offered to save her life by performing the Heimlich on her. Little Sister said, "I just have weird hiccups," which led to the worker expounding his philosophy about mortality to us. He said that he ate too much Shake Shack food, which was bad for him, but "I'd rather die happy than skinny."

Peeta acted like this conversation was a matter of course. He even joined us for a picture with our new Shake Shack friend.

We then headed to the Top of the Rock, which for all you yahoos means the top of the Rockefeller Center. As we headed that direction, Peeta mentioned that he'd been to New York City before. In fact, he had friends living in New York City whom he was planning to hang out with later that night.

It occurred to us that Dr. Godfather wanted Peeta to look out for us more than he wanted us to look out for Peeta. Sneaky Dr. Godfather.

At the Rockefeller Center, we took the elevator to the top and gazed out over the lights of the city that never sleeps.

New York City. What a place.

Try Central Park; It's Guaranteed

Context: This post is about the fifth day of my New York City trip, which was our fourth day in the city.

"We're going to spend pretty much all of Sunday in Central Park," Older Sister said. For months, she said this. That was the plan. Early church, and then Central Park all day long.

But by Saturday night, Little Sister had come down with the cold. Not a cold--the cold. The cold that had made its run through our entire family over the past few weeks. The cold that I was getting over, and Older Sister was in the midst of, when we boarded the plane on Wednesday night. The cold that now was in the possession of Little Sister.

So for Little Sister's sake, we slept in latish on Sunday morning and then took the subway uptown to the eleven o'clock ward in the Manhattan temple.

After church--Central Park.

First of all, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there aren't any trolls in Central Park. Not that I saw, anyways. I also didn't see any beaming Disney leading ladies singing about love or any Baby-Sitters Club baby-sitters hanging out with their charges.

What I did see was a lot of trees. And grass. And people. AIDS Walk New York was there the same day we were, and they came right into the park. There were also lots of ice cream trucks. Central Park is basically a small wooded country that has been colonized by ice cream trucks.

We wandered around the park for a while. We saw Strawberry Fields, the John Lennon memorial. There were signs everywhere at the memorial requesting that visitors not play music or ride bikes or skateboards. Naturally, no one obeyed those rules, and the entire place looked like a musician, biker, and skateboarder convention.

We saw the Alice in Wonderland statue. There were children all over every inch of that thing and no way to convince them to move long enough to let me climb up on it. Jerks. But I did enjoy the Alice in Wonderland quotes on the ground around the statue.

We saw a man making huge bubbles out of soapy water. We stopped to watch and to let Glory join him in his bubble-making fun.

Unfortunately, we didn't see much else. Within a few hours, Older Sister had grown disenchanted with her plan to spend the day in Central Park. Well, all of us had, but especially Older Sister. She hadn't realized that everything in Central Park was so far apart or that it was all so hard to find. To find anything, we had to use Older Sister's smartphone and its magical capabilities. However, Older Sister's smartphone plan only has so much magic that she can use each month, and she was worried about running out of said magic.

I'm going to make a quick observation, which is that Central Park needs some map kiosks with paper maps, like they have at Disneyland or the zoo. And if Central Park already has maps somewhere within its expansive borders, then there needs to be some other maps leading to those maps.

One thing in the park we did find without too much trouble was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you've ever read From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, then you know this museum as the one to which Claudia and Jamie Kincaid ran away.

It is a lovely building, with tons of stone steps at the front. There were tons of Halal food carts around the museum. Lots of people had bought food from the carts and were just sitting on the stone steps, eating casually, as if they weren't just eating lunch on the steps of one of the most famous museums in the world! Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, so we bought ourselves some lunch and ate it sitting on the steps of the Met. Like you do. 

Then we went inside. Many of the displays were very European, by which I mean that there were lots of paintings and statues of naked people. I saw a lot of this a few years ago in Europe, and I can only conclude that art without clothes was just all the rage in the Renaissance. 

While Glory wandered around freely, my sisters and I buzzed around looking at French furniture, entire Egyptian temples, and Faberge eggs that once belonged to the Romanov family. This sounds easy, but it was actually a lot of hard work. When reading From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I used to think that it required a small suspension of disbelief to accept that two children could live inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a week without being detected. Well, I'm sorry I doubted you, E. L. Konigsburg, because a small elephant could live inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a week without being detected. The building is not only huge, but labyrinthine inside. I could only navigate for us using the paper map that the museum had so thoughtfully provided at the entrance. (Seriously, Central Park. Get your act together.)

After the museum, we walked up and down the length of the park, trying to decide where we wanted to go/figure out where everything else was. This proved fruitless, so somewhat disappointed with our Central Park experience, we walked the 5,000,000 blocks to FAO Schwarz.

Okay, there were not that many blocks. But by this point, we'd been on the go for days, and we were all pretty tired.

However, we all perked up somewhat when we saw the Plaza Hotel, that lodging of the rich, the famous, and little girls named Eloise! We had to go inside, so we did, and immediately became acutely aware of just how poor we are. We snapped some pictures in the elegant lobby, then checked out the hotel shopping. This made us even more acutely aware of our poverty. 

Then after the Plaza: FAO Schwarz.

FAO Schwarz is just a toy store in the way that Willy Wonka's is just a candy factory. FAO Schwarz was one of the destination spots I'd insisted that we see, and it was practically worth the trip just to see it.

Little Sister and I were excited. Older Sister and Glory were not very excited, so they collapsed on the floor while Little Sister and I ran around the entire place.

There were musical instruments! Gigantic stuffed animals! Books! Dolls! Candy of all kinds! Legos! Board games and puzzles! Baby clothes! Barbies! Knick knacks! Gryffindor scarves! And the Muppet Whatnot Workshop, which is exclusively at FAO Schwarz! Little Sister and spent several minutes watching new Muppets be made for young Muppet fans (or, I suspect, the uninterested children of not-so-young Muppet fans).

Little Sister and I explored almost the entire store. One of the escalators was down, so we used it at stairs, but then we thought that it was moving and sort of freaked out and actually clutched each other fearfully. Because a moving escalator is terrifying? I don't know. Little Sister was sick and probably somewhat delirious, but there's no excuse for me.

Before we left FAO Schwarz, Older Sister and Glory finally rekindled their inner child enough to actually look around the store. There was even some excitement and wonder in their eyes.

The success of FAO Schwarz, in my opinion, made up for the not-so-great experience in Central Park. I felt very pleased as we took the subway back to Times Square, picked up dinner, and are in our hotel room while watching I Love Lucy. It was still fairly early, but we were beat.

We began to prepare for bed.

"Sweet mother of FAO Schwarz!" Glory cried in some moment of mild distress.

When we laughed at her, she defended her choice of exclamation by saying, "She was a sweet woman!"

Then Older Sister became far more distressed than Glory had been.

"Dr. Godfather just texted me," she said, referring to a family friend who grew up in New York and who had helped us plan our trip. "His best friend's son just arrived in the city, and Dr. Godfather wants us to show him around tomorrow..."

The Lion King and I

This post is about the fourth day of my New York City trip, which was our third day in the city.

On Saturday, we woke up very excited because we were going to see two musicals that day: a matinee and a normal evening show. The matinee was The Lion King and the evening show was The King and I. You will notice that I have combined both of these names to title this blog post. I hope that you will leave comments telling me how clever I am.

We all got up quite early and accompanied Glory uptown to the Manhattan temple, because she desired to worship there. While she did that, my sisters and I ate breakfast at Starbucks (I wanted to order a bagel with lox, something that New York is known for, but they were out of lox) and then scouted out the Lincoln Center, the home of The King and I. Our excitement to see this classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical grew.

We also stumbled across Central Park, but we didn't go in because we had plans to spend most of the next day there.

When Glory came out of the temple, we all headed to the American Mvsevm of Natvral History. At least, that's what a sign on the outside of the building looked like it said. It was an engraving in stone that looked pretty old, presumably from a time period when it was fashionable to write pointy "u"s that look like "v"s.

In any case, the American Museum of Natural History was a very interesting place. It's the museum featured in the first Night at the Museum, but beyond that, there are some seriously cool exhibits there. Of course, we were only there for a few hours, so we didn't get to see everything. Not even close.

This is where a big difference between my sisters and I and Glory can be found. We Obnoxiouses, realizing that we only had a few hours, immediately planned out the exhibits we wanted to see and began to power through them. Glory, on the other hand, wandered aimlessly throughout the museum as if she had all the time in the world. I wouldn't say that Glory is necessarily more interested in natural history than we are, but I would definitely say that she is much better at living in the moment.

Anyways, there were lots of interesting exhibits. Like there was this one exhibit replicating a burial site from some culture I can't recall. It was the burial site of some guy, and then around him were laid some women and a few other guys. Then there was another guy who had been set cross-legged in a niche in the wall. Some cultures, like the Ancient Egyptians, believe that you take what you're buried with into the next life. In that case, I can understand wanting to take your women and a few manservants with you. But I cannot for the life of me think why you would want a guy specifically sitting cross-legged in a wall.

Another exhibit was about the people of the Caucasus Mountains, otherwise known as the group white people are supposedly descended from. I showed Little Sister the exhibit, and she said, "So we're all descended from Jedis?" and pointed to the clothing in the exhibit. It was very Jedi-ish.

The Lion King started at 2:00 p.m., so as it neared 1:00 Older Sister hustled us out of the museum.

We'd made a plan to get lunch from one of the food carts in front of the museum. All said food carts were called "Halal." I don't know if that's the name of the type of food or just the brand of the cart, but we saw tons of 'em all over the city.

Please remember that the night before we ate a light dinner at Pret a Manger and that the day before that we'd had no breakfast, a sandwich apiece at Junior's, and no dinner at all, just cheesecake. Amazing cheesecake, it's true, but still cheesecake.

See, I am like Ron Weasley. As long as I am fed three good meals a day, I can withstand anything and crack jokes the whole time. But if I have to skip a meal or don't get enough to eat, I am not a happy camper. I become grumpy, succumb to the whisperings of a Horcrux, and/or abandon people in the woods.

So I was pretty excited about the chicken over rice I purchased at the Halal cart. It looked like the most substantial thing I'd eaten in days, even counting when I was back home in Utah. Meat, vegetables, some carbs for energy--perfect.

"Let's find a place to sit down," I said, balancing my container of food and my grape soda and my purse in my hands.

"We can't sit down," squawked Older Sister. "We have to eat while we walk!"

"We can sit down for fifteen minutes," I said. I guess Older Sister saw in my eyes that I was about to succumb to the whisperings of a Horcrux and/or abandon someone in the woods, because she quickly acquiesced.

We sat and ate. The spices on my chicken were unique but amazing. What really made the dish was what the vendor called white sauce. It was, indeed, a white sauce. Possibly yogurt-based? It was very good.

Feeling much fuller and happier, I continued on to the Minskoff Theatre for the matinee performance of The Lion King.

Y'all know I love Disney. So it pains me to say this, but I've seen the Broadway touring company of The Lion King before, and I was just as disappointed that time as I was this time. The added music in the stage version gives you chills, thrills, and everything in between, and there are some fun puppets, but other than that I think it's somewhat inferior to the movie. The musical is overburdened with special effects that distract from the action and make the storytelling uneven instead of supplementing it. It's still a good time, though, and if you're looking for pure Broadway spectacle and don't mind shelling out $100+ per ticket, be my guest. Whoops--wrong musical.

Anyways, after that, Glory and Older Sister went to the hotel while Little Sister and I went back to Junior's and obtained these strange things called black-and-white cookies that New York City is famous for. White frosting on one side...chocolate frosting on the other...I don't know why this is a thing, but they tasted okay. Not amazing, though.

We all met up again and headed uptown to this place called Ed's Chowder House. It was deceptively casual on the outside, but pretty swank on the inside. There we had another New York dish--Manhattan chowder, a seafood chowder with tomatoes in it. I'd had it before but never, of course, in Manhattan.

Then we went to the Lincoln Center for The King and I. And wow.

Wow.

If The Lion King was a disappointment, The King and I was whatever the opposite of a disappointment is. It exceeded expectations. Tremendously.

I've seen The King and I before: one high school production, one community production, and the excellent though much-altered Rankin and Bass cartoon production. It's a musical I really like, and when Older Sister proposed we see the new limited Broadway revival, I agreed immediately. I just didn't expect so much...magic.

Was it the actors? Kelli O'Hara, noted Broadway soprano, and Ken Watanabe, whom I recognized as the Japanese businessman from Inception? Was it them that made the musical so much better than usual? Or the adorableness of the royal children? Or the talent of the kid who played Louis, who charmed me within the first few minutes of the show?

Was it seeing Oscar Hammerstein's book and lyrics delivered as they were meant to be, by trained professionals? Was it, for the first time, fully understanding the subtlety and beauty of the story? Marveling at the way he presented this story as a love story using entirely subtext and no declarations of love at all?

Was it hearing Richard Rodgers' score played, as it was meant to be played, by a live orchestra? Was the difference in that added fullness and sound?

Or was it being in a theatre, on Broadway...with amazing actors, on Broadway...performing an amazing show with amazing music on Broadway? Was it that in the space of a few days I'd already seen revolting children and squeamish singing murderers and singing lions and now I was watching a musical with one of the most iconic moments in musical theatre history where a tutor does a polka with a king and who even thought of that and was there ANYTHING this town COULDN'T do?

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! But I do know as we walked back to our hotel, there was a song in my heart and a polka in my feet.

A Pizza Grows in Brooklyn

Context: this post is about the third day of my New York City trip, which was our second day in the city.

Our second day in New York City was a Friday. And on that Friday, we did three main things.

We ate dinner at Pret a Manger, which was okay. It's one of those places where you grab cold wraps, sandwiches, and salads off refrigerated shelves. I'm more of a hot food person myself, as my parents can attest. They always hated it when I heated up their house by using the oven or making thick soup for dinner on a hot summer's day. So Pret a Manger was not my thing, and it also didn't really fill me up.

After dinner, we went to A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, which was fun. This musical won Best Musical in the 2014 Tony Awards, and let me tell you--it deserved it. It was well-written and well-presented. The premise is that a distant relation of an earl starts killing off his relatives so that he will become the next earl. I expected this show to get dark quickly, a la Jekyll and Hyde, but incredibly it stayed light and hilarious the whole time. More incredibly, the murderer remained a sympathetic character throughout the show. However, should you be interested in seeing this show, know that there were some inappropriate jokes and one terribly inappropriate song.

But. Before we ate at Pret a Manger or attended A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, we experienced the best part of our day, otherwise known as A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour.

This tour, this tour--where do I start when telling you about this tour? At the beginning, I suppose. Well, in the beginning, when we were planning the trip, one of Glory's stipulations was that she wanted to go on a bus tour and be typical tourists. In her wisdom, Older Sister decided that the best bus tour would be a pizza bus tour. And thus she reserved us places on A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour.

Glory was excited for the chance to be bus tourists on a tour bus. While we were looking around Times Square the day before, she insisted that we all buy I <3 NY shirts to wear the next day on the bus tour so that everyone knew we were tourists. She also produced a pair of pink pajama pants covered with miniature I <3 NY designs to wear with her shirt to be even more touristy.

You may be confused as to why this excited Glory so. Well, in her senior year of high school, all of Glory's girl friends asked someone to the school Halloween dance. When Glory couldn't find anyone, she decided to go to the dance stag, dressed as a blade of grass.

Either this story will help you understand Glory more, or it will just confuse you. But if you're confused, you're not alone.

On Friday morning, we all put on our I <3 NY shirts to placate Glory. Glory added her pajama pants. Older Sister and I added cardigans over our shirts, which we pulled shut while on the subway. Being dressed as tourists on the bus tour was all very well, but it seemed best not to do it on the subway.

By this point, we were beginning to understand the ease of the subway. Yes, our passes continued to be plagued with issues, but the actual subway was quite simple to use. If we were on 42nd street and wanted to go to any street with a higher number, we got on the subway heading uptown. If we wanted to go to a street with a lower number, we got on the subway heading downtown. Easy, no?

In this case, we went downtown to 14th Street and Union Square. Union Square was lovely--there was a little farmer's market, a park with a statue that was probably Mahatma Gandhi but which looked like an airbender, and some fun shops nearby.

We didn't spend a lot of time there, though, because we had to meet up with our tour guide. And as lovely as Union Square was, once we met our tour guide everything became 10,000,000 times better.

"Hey, how you doin'?" she asked us once we were all on the bus.

"Good," everyone on the bus chorused back.

She told us that in Brooklyn, if someone says, "How you doin'?" you say, "How you doin'?" back. Then she told us to "fuhgettaboud" the rest of the city, because she was going to show us Brooklyn and its pizza.

Her name was Paula. She said that she was half Jewish, half Italian Roman Catholic, and that she grew up in the same apartment building as both sets of her grandparents. She had an amazing Brooklyn accent, made casual references to her cousin Tony, and threw Yiddish phrases around like it was no big deal. I don't know if she exaggerated her Brooklyn-ness for the sake of the tour or if she acted like this naturally, but we loved it. I would have gladly donned a t-shirt that instead said I <3 Paula. Or maybe even I <3 Brooklyn, because her obvious enthusiasm and love for her borough were rubbing off on me.

Speaking of the I <3 NY shirts, everyone on our tour kept saying that our matching outfits were cute. So, apparently, did Paula, who kept calling us the "cute Utah girls," and saying we all had amazing hair. She told Glory that she'd been to one city in Utah before, but that she got a much more positive impression of the state from us than she had from the people she met while she was there.

Paula took us to a perfect photo op spot looking over the harbor. She took us to Coney Island and to places in Brooklyn where movies were filmed. She showed us the houses of wealthy people in the upscale neighborhoods, telling us that she'd knocked on the owners' doors to find out more about their houses for her tour. She shared local gossip and stories about the mafia with us. And, then, of course, she took us for pizza.

Included in the price of the tour were four slices of pizza and two drinks each. First, we went to Grimaldi's for famous coal-fire margherita pizza.

All that was on this thin-crusted pizza was tomato sauce, basil, and some "fresh mozzarell," as Paula called it. "That's it," she said. She said that pizza doesn't need anything else on it, and she was right. All my two slices needed was a bottle of root beer to wash them down.

Then we went to L&B Spumoni Gardens, where we had a thicker-crust, Sicilian-style, square pizza. This pizza had the mozzarella cheese underneath the sauce and a second kind of cheese on top. If possible, this pizza was even better than Grimaldi's. There were little dishes of Parmesan on the tables to sprinkle over your pizza and an ice cream parlor that sold spumni. I ate gelato every day when I was in Europe a few years ago. I've been crazy about it ever since, but I'd never tried spumoni, a different type of Italian ice cream. So I bought a cup of rainbow (chocolate, vanilla, and pistachio) spumoni to try. I was glad I did.

After our amazing tour, we were all full, which is why we ended up at Pret a Manger for a light (too light, for me) dinner instead of eating somewhere else. And then we went to A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder etcetera, etcetera; you know the rest.

But for the rest of the trip, we kept talking about that tour and, unabashedly, would try to imitate Paula's amazing accent. Little Sister and I did it a few nights later with the condiments at the dinner table:

LITTLE SISTER: Do you want salt in ya watah?

AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want salt in my watah!

LITTLE SISTER: Do you want peppah in ya watah?

AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want peppah in my watah!

LITTLE SISTER: Do you want red peppah in ya watah?

AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want red peppah in my watah!

I guess it doesn't take t-shirts to make us look like tourists.

Just Got Here This Morning

Context: This post is about the second day of my New York City trip.

As soon as the plane descended, things went wrong.

I mentioned in my last post that I was getting over a cold. When we left, I felt slightly sick, but not so sick it was worth mentioning. Which is a figurative expression, since I just mentioned it. Also I mentioned it in my last post. As I mentioned. The word "mention" is starting to lose all meaning for me.

Anyways, shortly after we began to descend, someone committed murder on my ears.

The pressure. The pressure! It was like being in a black hole, or 20,000 leagues under the sea, or on a blind date with a friend's favorite cousin. My ears were screaming. Sobbing. Cursing their existence.

My face, however, was placid.

I don't know why this is, but anytime I am in a public location and I feel any kind of physical or emotional pain or discomfort, I immediately think, "No one must know!" and then do my best to not give any sign that I am in distress. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't.

In this instance, I was very stoic. I said nothing to Little Sister nor made any sign to her that I wanted nothing more than to rip my ears out of my head and/or chew a stick of gum.

I know what you're probably thinking. You're probably thinking, "Ear pain is a common symptom of flying, Awkward Mormon Girl! Surely an experienced traveler such as yourself must have prepared for this possibility by bringing some gum."

Well, you'd think I'd think of that, but I've been on many, many airplanes, and the last time my ears bothered me was ten years ago or more. I thought I'd outgrown it.

But apparently that was a foolish thing to think, because my ears felt like victims of Lizzie Borden. Since I didn't have any gum, I resorted to opening and closing my jaw repeatedly as if I were chewing on some. Then, when that didn't work, I reached into my carry-on for some beef jerky.

"Ooh, can I have some?" Little Sister said brightly. Still stoic, I silently tore my salvation in two and handed her half.

Except not even chewing on a tough piece of beef jerky made my ears pop. The pressure was building and it hurt sooo bad and I just couldn't wait for the plane to land so that my ears would pop and it would all be over.

Well, presently the plane landed. And the pain on my ears subsided, but they did not pop. They remained clogged with pressure.

Has this ever happened to you? It had never happened to me. I was flabbergasted and extremely worried. So worried I didn't say a single thing about it until Older Sister said, "The pressure didn't pop in one of my ears and now I can't really hear out of it."

This confession led me to share that the same thing had happened to me, but in both of my ears, and that I could scarcely hear anything whatsoever.

Glory, who is an RN like my mother, determined that these phenomena were somehow due to the fact that I was almost over a cold and Older Sister was in the midst of one. She then gave us both a lot of medical advice, which was well-meaning but which didn't really seem to help.

We gathered our luggage and took the airtrain to Jamaica Station. This is an approximation of an actual conversation Older Sister and I had on the airtrain:

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (says something)

OLDER SISTER: What? What did you say?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What? I can't hear you.

OLDER SISTER: What?

So there we were, about to head into a large, crowded city where you can be perfectly safe as long as you are careful and alert. We could still be careful, but it's hard to be alert when you can barely hear.

At Jamaica Station, we bought weeklong subway passes. Then we ventured onto the subway for the very first time.

These passes worked in a simple manner. We were entitled to an endless amount of subway rides for seven days; however, I found out that if you swiped your pass at a turnstile and pushed your luggage through said turnstile ahead of you, you couldn't swipe immediately after because the card would tell you it had just been used. This was probably meant to deter people from going through the turnstile and handing their pass back to others behind them for repeated use, but it was quite problematic for me. I solved this problem by vaulting over the turnstile. Interestingly, no one seemed to notice or tried to stop me.

We encountered various other problems with using our subway passes over the next week, and we continued to solve these problems in increasingly creative ways, including one instance where Little Sister and I went through a revolving door entrance as a single person.

This first day, we found the subway train that would get us to Times Square and rode said subway train for what seemed like an eternity. We'd barely slept on the plane, but there were no available seats on our subway car so we were standing the entire ride. C'est la vie.

Once we got off at Times Square, we hauled our luggage up a long (and dirty. The subway stations in New York are just as dirty as people say) flight of stairs, and then emerged from the famed mode of underground transportation into Times Square, Manhattan, and New York City!

Immediately, we set about to find our hotel. It was on Times Square, not too far from the subway at all, but it took us a while to grow accustomed to the layout. We got turned around a few times, which meant that we crossed a lot of streets.

Nobody in New York City seems to know how to cross a street safely. When the Don't Walk symbol is up at the crosswalk, the pedestrians glance around for any cars and then walk straight through. When there's a Do Walk symbol, they walk across in a long, thick stream of humans that continues long after the light turns green.

I had a conversation in my head with the New York City pedestrians, which went something like this:

I said, "Don't you know that you're supposed to stay on the sidewalk unless there's a Do Walk symbol at the crosswalk?"

To which they replied, "Sidewalk? This city is our sidewalk. The world is our sidewalk!"

This clued me in that you just can't do anything with New York City pedestrians, at least not the ones in my head. To be fair, though, the drivers were about the same. Red lights, green lights--it didn't matter. They continually pressed forward in an effort to somehow get through the masses of people.

Because there were so many people. Especially during the evenings. Everything was crowded, though not unpleasantly so, I thought. However, on this first morning I was unable to fully appreciate this interesting sense of being crowded, or much of anything else that was around me, due to my ears.

Some people say that when one sense of theirs is damaged, the rest are heightened. That was not true in this case. It seemed like when my ears became impaired, the rest of my senses became impaired too. As the sounds of the city were muted, so, it seemed, were the sights and smells and feelings.

Eventually, we made it to our hotel. We'd landed around 6 a.m. Now it was around 8. Check-in wasn't until 4 p.m., but we were able to drop off our luggage and head out into the city to be tourists.

First adventure of the day: the Empire State Building! We walked to said building, got in line, and used our New York City passes to obtain tickets.

By this point, my ears were popping at random. Which would be good, except that they would immediately clog up again. Also, the popping was extremely painful. I had long since abandoned the stoicism and would give a little shriek each time the pressure ruptured.

All the signs and the attendants bragged that it took the elevator less than one minute to get to the 80th floor. Indeed, the elevator took us up quite high quite fast. The elevation change caused my ears to pop rapidly.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Then we looked out over the city, which was impressive, but which didn't require a lot of time. So we took the elevator back down-

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Ow ow ow ow ow ow.

-and headed to Junior's for lunch. On the way, we checked out some shops at Times Square and bought postcards, t-shirts, and other souvenirs.

Lunch at Junior's was okay. The city was pretty chilly our first day, but the inside of Junior's was even chillier. On the up side, this kept us awake, but on the down side, it was, well, cold.

I had a BLT. BLTs all taste about the same, but this one brought to mind the one that Viola's parents bought me at IHOP for Viola's fourteenth birthday celebration. Both that sandwich and the one I ate at Junior's were too tall to fit in my mouth easily. This made both of them difficult to eat.

After lunch, we looked around Times Square some more. Glory, who was totally beat, and Older Sister, who was heading that way, sat on benches while Little Sister and I, who had a little more energy, checked out the Times Square Disney store.

It was just like the Disney store at home, but bigger, and with bigger things. There was a Snow White doll the size of a small child and a wall mural with the silhouettes of beloved Disney characters that stretched all the way up the stairs.

LITTLE SISTER: This sign says that there's a Frozen wonderland upstairs.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: They have a Junior's up there?

At this point, our hotel had prepared a room for us early (it was around 1 p.m.), and since Glory was so tired, we soon went back to the hotel and napped. Even though Obnoxiouses don't nap on vacation...going all day on just a few hours of sleep was too much, even for us.

After nap time (which lasted like four hours), we dressed up in preparation for dinner and Matilda. Except that Older Sister decreed that we would not get dinner, but go back to Junior's and get cheesecake in lieu of dinner. This second trip to Junior's was a lot more successful. My chocolate mousse cheesecake looked so good that a lady asked me, "What are you eating?" and it tasted so good that I told her she should buy some.

Then we went to the Shubert Theatre to see Matilda, a perfect choice for our first Broadway show: wacky and joyful, with great music, great lyrics, a great book, great characters, great set, great choreography, great special effects, and a great cast of talented children. In a word, this show was great.

At the end of the last ensemble number, a shower of confetti was released from the ceiling. It felt like a celebration not only of the Trunchbull's exit from Crunchem Hall, but of our very first day in New York City.

Upon exiting the Shubert Theatre, we pushed through the crowded streets to get back to our hotel. I showered, got ready for bed...and prayed that in the morning, my ears would no longer feel like Jack the Ripper had done a number on them.

I Had My Tray Table Up and My Seat Back in the Full Upright Position

The last time I was on a red eye flight, it was a Lufthansa flight from Chicago to Munich. I wrote an email to my parents (which I later repurposed as a blog post), ate a delicious dinner, and slept.

I wanted to have a similar experience on the flight to New York. I wanted to write a blog post so that I could brag to you, "This blog post was written at tens of thousands of feet in the sky. I bet you've never read a blog post written tens of thousands of feet in the sky before." It also would have been nice to eat a delicious dinner, and to have a relaxing sleep. Alas, it was not to be.

The week that I left, there was quite a bit of work that needed to be done in my place of employment. Instead of being a sensible person and taking my coworkers' offers to finish my work for me when I was gone, I determined to do it ALL before I left town.

I got up early. Each day, I went to my place of employment, did a heap of work, then spent the rest of the day jumping from obligation to obligation--social, familial, religious, and necessary for my trip. Did I mention that I also had a very bad cold? Well, I did, and sometimes I felt feverish and only half-aware of what I was doing. It was not ideal, but I was going to get all the things done, dangit!

The day I left, I went straight from work to finish packing and straight from packing to the airport. I arrived at the airport satisfied that I could leave for New York City with peace of mind but also exhausted, mentally spent, and not quite over the vestiges of my cold.

At the airport, we met up with Glory, a family friend who went to high school with Older Sister and me and the fourth member of our New York City party. We sat around waiting for our red eye flight: Glory talking animatedly to Older Sister about her (Glory’s) boyfriend, Little Sister braiding my hair and doing homework for her online class, and me having my hair braided and watching a Youtube video for the Weird Al song “Albuquerque.” This is a song where, among other things, the protagonist survives an airplane crash by having his tray table up and his seat back in the full upright position. Little Sister and I have referenced this song every time we’ve boarded an airplane for the last five years. We are quite fond of it.

By the time we boarded our flight around 11:00 pm, I was too tired to write anything coherent. I was too tired to eat much, and so all that was left to do was sleep. I put on my complimentary sleep mask and snuggled up against the window.

I slept fitfully for about forty-five minutes, woke, repositioned myself, and went back to sleep. I then slept equally fitfully for another hour and fifteen minutes, only to wake to find Little Sister’s head resting on my shoulder.

“Time to wake up!” my body said.

“What gives, man?” I said to my body. "We’ve barely slept in a week. Please let me sleep. I really want to sleep.”

But you don’t always get what you want.

I looked around inside the dark airplane. Earlier, the flight attendants had walked up and down the aisles, offering drinks and snacks and rapidly turning their heads to see which passengers were going to take them up on these offers. (They seemed to have very flexible necks.) However, at this point they weren’t walking around very much, because most of the passengers were asleep. As they slept, most had their arms folded tight against their bodies. It made them look like a contingent of super grumpy people.

I looked at my iPod. There was actual Wi-Fi inside the flight, sorcery the likes of which I’d never experienced before. I watched a few videos and did some random internet surfing.

I looked straight outside the window. There were bands of gold on a blue horizon as we flew eastward into the dawn.

I looked down outside the window. There was a lot of water and fog below us. “Ah,” I thought. “The…famous New York State marshes?” It wasn’t until later that I realized we were probably over the Great Lakes.

I looked at Little Sister’s legs, which had found their way onto my lap.

I felt quiet inside. I was heading into a city with tons of people and buildings and vehicles all packed into a relatively small space, and it would not be quiet there, but I was quiet inside. I was taking a deep breath before plunging into the unknown.