This parsonage, we'll take...

Just kidding. We thought this church and large house-ish building near Battery Park was pretty amusing, though. We had a great time in New York City this past weekend! We stayed with our brother and sister-in-law, Andrew and Alexis, in New Jersey (here they are in Philly, where we spent Friday afternoon and evening--Camden, NJ in the background there, across the river).

Saturday, Matt and I took the hour-long train ride into Manhattan. I wanted to get there early enough to stand outside the Today show and wave like an idiot. We arrived in Rockefellar Plaza about a minute after they went off the air. Matt was quite relieved. We got coffee at Dean & Deluca and poked around Midtown for a while. I want to live there! Not that we could afford that, but it would be totally awesome. I could work here:
We then mosied our way down through Greenwich Village and had lunch in Soho, then went further downtown to see Ground Zero and hang out at Battery Park and at the South Street Seaport. We had both been to NYC before and done the touristy things, so we really just enjoyed taking our time and soaking up the culture of each neighborhood.

My desire to live in Manhattan diminished after hanging out on the southern end for a while. It may have partially been the fact that it got overcast at that part of the day and the financial district was pretty deserted since it was Saturday, but that whole area just felt kind of depressing, and we wondered if it was still a kind of 9/11 malaise hanging over that area. People seemed to walk slower in the streets surrounding Ground Zero, and the whole energy of the city seemed to change.

Our main reason for taking this trip was to see Rent on Broadway before it leaves later this year. So, after a tasty Italian dinner in the Village, we hurried up to 41st St. to see Rent on its home turf, the Nederlander Theatre. The show was fabulous, of course. My dream of running into Anthony Rapp did not come true, but I still got to have my picture with him! We took some pics of the cool graffiti outside the Nederlander. I think I'll put those in a separate post (or maybe if Matt reads this, he can do it? pretty please, sweetie?)
We didn't get back to our lodgings in Jersey til about 2am, and I don't think I've ever hit the hay (or an air mattress) so hard. We then spent Sunday walking around Princeton, where Andrew is in grad school. It is such a pretty campus and neat little town. Here's Matt with one of the most famous Phi Psi brothers of all--Woodrow Wilson--president of Princeton before he became U.S. president. If you look closely at WW's signature, you'll see the mysterious three dots after his name. That's one of Phi Psi's silly secret things. Thank you, baby, for breaking that tradition on our marriage license, at least! And thanks for an awesome weekend getaway!