Day 1

Actually our story starts before we even leave. You all saw the schedule I posted before and you know that chicken spent a lot of time on it. Well the airline cancelled our flight...we were change to a flight that would arrive at 4 pm...Chicken went ballistic contacting half the world trying to change our flight to an earlier time. She told them that we had to leave because we were going to see the last show of Beauty and the Beast on Sat. at 3pm. (The last show was on Sunday at 7pm.) Finally, she gets a little old lady to get us on a flight that leaves an hour earlier than we were supposed to leave. She tries to contact me to let me know, but I was at Billy's till late and I refused to call her back that late. Well, she stayed up all night waiting for me to call and I stayed up all night, because I knew I had to go pick up mom at 4am. She gets a hold of me at 330 and we are on our way. We make it to the airport and I run into a few of my YES students from earlier in the week during the security check. We barely make the flight because Chicken went to go get bagels for us and was too short to be seen over the counter and they passed her over a few times. We get on the flight and it was a little bumpy, but all is well. (Oh there is a story in here about mom and coffee cream that is better reenacted.) We ride a shuttle to our hotel with this young couple from AZ and they are overwhelmed by the radio station and the shuttle drivers driving ability.

We drop off our stuff and we are off. We start off by walking Wall Street and seeing the NY stock exchange. Mom sees a church and thinks it the church she read about and wanted to go to. It's not, but still a beautiful church and we got a children's book there about how the church went virtually physically unharmed on 9/11 and it is only 2 blocks away. We went to a deli and then we walked to the Ground Zero. We walked the whole perimeter. I could not even believe how much huge an area it was and watching them rebuild it you how deep the damage was. It looked as though they were still pulling debris. We went to the tribute center and I just couldn't help but cry. It was heartbreaking and overwhelming. After that we found the church mom was looking for and we walked around there. We then headed to Times Square and we went in search of cheap tickets.

We get there at 330pm. We check Tkts and we see a few options but don't know what we want to do. We hear there is the lottery that half the musicals are doing. You get there at said time and if you are selected you get front row seats for $25. The first one is hairspray at 5pm. We are off. We get there wait for an hour and we don't get in. Off to Ave Q. No go. Off to Drowsy Chaperone and we failed again. (There is a story in here about me and a real-life Sharpay and that is better left for later.) So we go back to Tkts and we try for 50% tickets for Legally Blonde, Hairspray (There was only 1 left!), and Ave Q. (We would have had to sit separately.) We decide on Forbidden Broadway and I am so glad we did. It is an off-Broadway show and it has been running for years. They constantly update to make fun of the shows that are out and it was awesome! I recommend it for any musical fan. After that we finally come back to get some sleep...Wonder how day 2 will work out...