Turn Off the Dark (NYC Day Two)

After a great nights sleep we awoke to the sounds of New York hustle and bustle in the streets. We were able to sleep with the windows cracked open, so to have birds chirping, cars honking and trucks cleaning the streets as our alarm clock was definitely something new.

Christmas trees for sale on every street corner! It boggled our minds. Yup, we're southerners for sure.

Jeremy being mistaken for Lil' Wayne. He gave his autograph!

Asha got a caption written above her head on the live Forever 21 ad! 

We were both pretty excited for Day Two's agenda because it was highlighted by viewing a show on Broadway! Because we hadn't purchased our tickets ahead of time, we went to the TKTS Discount booth in Times Square. If you didn't know, these TKTS Booths only sell discounted tickets. Every ticket ranged from 20-60% off. Of course, on this wonderful morning, only while we were waiting in line, it decided to rain. And on top of that, because why wouldn't it be this way, we forgot our umbrellas! Luckily, it didn't rain very hard and there were enough umbrellas in line to semi-protect us.

The rain wasn't going to get us down!

While waiting in line, some of the Ticket booth workers talked to the crowd informing us that tickets sell fast so we needed to be prepared with our top 3 show choices. So here were our top 3:

1. 'Spider-Man' - Asha recommended this before we left and obviously Jeremy agreed this should be the #1 choice.
2. 'Newsies' - We heard this was good.
3. 'Elf' - It was the holiday season! We'd never seen this show, but if it was anything like the movie, then we could take a chance on it.

After happily seeing the 'Spider-Man' show was 50% off, we finally reached the ticket window. We decided on the 1:00 showing which wasn't too far ahead. Once our tickets were in hand, we headed toward Foxwood Theatre to await the "Dazzling and Awesome" performance of "Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark".

While waiting for the show to start, we weren't quite sure what to expect. We knew there was flying involved, people had previously gotten hurt and that U2 frontman, Bono, helped produce the music but that was about it. We sat back to enjoy the show and by the finale, we were on our feet, along with everyone else, clapping for the cast as it was a really great show. We were both blown away at how engaging, visually appealing and fun the show was. The final battle featured Spider-man and The Green Goblin flying above us, the cast interacted with the audience and at one point we were covered in Spidey's web. It was pretty cool and we both wouldn't mind seeing it again! During intermission, we were told to look for audience photos on Facebook. During the show, they take pictures of Spider-Man flying above the crowd. Can you spot us?!

We are SO glad we weren't making a stupid face like some people were...

It was pushing dinner time once we left Jeremy's favorite super hero and we were both starving. We passed by The Counter, a build your own burger style restaurant. It sounded great to us, so we walked on in and ordered us some GOOD burgers. We filled out our customized burger forms and patted ourselves on the back for finding such a cool restaurant in the middle of Manhattan. Of course, later that  night we sadly found out that The Counter was once at our very own South Park mall in Charlotte. We were pretty bummed that we ended up eating at a restaurant already in Charlotte but happy that we could visit again! THEN after doing some research back home, The Counter is no longer at South Park. Bummer.

Jeremy's customized burger form

Ice skating in Central Park was on Asha's mind and it was time to walk off some of those burgers we just downed. We decided to meet up with Sianneth and cross ice skating off our list. At the time, there was a light drizzle but as we kept walking towards Central Park, the drizzle turned into rain and it kept on coming down. We finally reached Central Park but by that time no one was in the mood to ice skate. We decided to put it off for another day and go see what we could find for the night.

"I'm not in the mood to ice skate anymore cuz of the stoopid rain" face from Asha.

As we walked, we found ourselves on the streets of 5th Avenue and Jeremy even spotted Tommy Hilfiger getting into his car! We also realized that 5th Avenue is EXPENSIVE. There was nothing there we could really afford. We've had plenty of practice at window shopping though, so we admired the window displays instead. Before we knew it, The Rockefeller Tree was in site and we marveled at the site we've seen so many times in tv and movies. It really was pretty magical. Even after all that walking in the rain. It was totally worth it. The pouty "I'm not in the mood to ice skate anymore cuz of the stoooopid rain" face from Asha quickly vanished and formed into a smile.

The Atlas statue at Rockefeller Center

Beneath the tree at Bryant Park

After watching a short video of Bumble the Abominable Snow Monster on the side of a tall and wide building in Rockefeller Center, we headed home. We got turned around using the subway, of course, but we finally found home and were grateful for another nights sleep. Stay tuned for Day Three is it was Asha's big day seeing Jason Mraz at Madison Square Garden!