We are one are pulling out of the driveway! We are excited for the fun trip ahead of us!😁😁Kristin just spilled coke on me!

I just listened to Kristin’s song she made with A.I.!?!?!?! It’s so catchy! It’s crazy! There is a new one for every day! I’m so excited to listen to them all!!!!🎵🎵🎵🤖🤖🤖🎤🎤😁

We didn’t have time to get all the way to Shake Shack, so we did Bub’s Burgers instead. We ordered the kids’ size with fries … and got surprise sliders lol! \240At least that will save us some room for dessert :)

We’re on a smaller plane so first class isn’t much different, but still more room! \240Kate likes the vibe of the small plane much better. Now just waiting for them to de-ice the plane and we’ll be on our way!

After our quick and easy flight (we even landed early!), we headed down to baggage claim and out to meet our car. Kate was trying to help me find the Uber, until the stretch limo showed up and asked for Kate!

We jumped in and our driver, Alex, showed us how to connect Kate’s phone for the music and had cold Sprite and Coke Zero waiting for us. The ride was so much fun! And unlike most times in NY, didn’t even make me car sick 😂.

After that, we got checked in to our hotel where we can see the TKTS Times Square steps in Father Duffy square from the lobby and from our room! \240We quickly got settled, and then headed out to see Times Square.

Kate noticed a crowd forming, so we walked over to see the “dance battle” that was starting. The breakdancing was great! Then they started jumping and flipping over the top of a kid and then some other people from the audience! Kate: “How lucky are we that this happened to be going on right when we got here?!” \240I told her there’s always something happening in Times Square, and we started walking south. About a half a block down… and there was another breakdancing group!

We went over to Junior’s Bakery to get some to go NY Cheesecake. Kate tried the Oreo and I got the strawberry. Back to the room, we started to wind down, ate maybe half of the cheesecake (it’s so big and rich!), and Kate wanted to make our own new AI song for the day. So we have two more - “Flying into Fantasy” was the song I’d already made and our joint collaboration is “City of Dreams!” \240It’s a bop. Kate loved the jazzy, ragtime beat. We decided the singer should have a 1920s bob and be in a long black gown singing next to a piano.

After a late night, breakfast \240comes early tomorrow at 7 so time for some sleep! Let’s hope the snow and ice aren’t too bad for some of our outdoor activities!

This morning started slushy and slippery - Kate themed it “Fresh Air and Frozen Hair.” \240We headed to breakfast at maman. Unfortunately the kitchen didn’t open til 8, but we loved our pastries and hot drinks! Pain au chocolat and hot chocolate for her, blueberry goat cheese scone and vanilla latte for me.

Our tour of Rockefeller Center was very cool! \240We learned about how John D Rockefeller Jr started construction during the Great Depression, giving jobs and hope to the whole city. Rockefeller Center was built as a city within a city, and a public art display. We learned the history of some of the art - the original mural at the entrance featured Vladimir Lenin because the artist was a Communist? So Rockefeller had the whole wall rebuilt and the new painting - American Progress - put up in its place. The original artist redid the painting in Mexico and added Jr to the painting, surrounded by drinking and smoking and gambling and all his least favorite things. Talk about throwing shade!

Then we got to the top, and rose up on the beam looking over (what we were told was) Central Park! We could just make out the tops of the closest buildings. We grabbed coffee, hot chocolate and popcorn in the lounge, and now are off for our next activity!

Next up was ice skating at the Rink at Rockefeller! Iconic experience once we both remembered how to do it. “It’s like riding a bike. A really slippery bike.”

After that we stopped for the best pizza near Rockefeller Plaza… which turned out to be Detroit style 😂. The wait at Ace’s was longer than we hoped, so we ended up with UBER good pizza on our way to our next stop!

We took the Uber to SoHo where we popped into Zara and Kate got ambushed by three stylists who couldn’t wait to meet Kate. They were all prepped for her and had a dressing room with a bunch of items already pulled. We did great at Zara and found a dress she loves with a few other things.

They nailed it for Kate’s style at Edikted - Kate loved everything about the store. We found some more good items then headed off to the Garage. That was Kate’s biggest haul but still her 3rd favorite store! \240We finished up at Brandy Melville with quite a few “New York” items.

We walked over to Housing Works Bookstore where Taylor Swift filmed her mini movie for All Too Well. Then we stopped at Milk Bar - where Taylor has been known to get her birthday cakes.

We headed back to the hotel to drop off bags, then it was off to dinner at the original Serendipity 3, where Serendipity the movie was filmed! \240We were a little over sugared, so we both loved our salads. She got birthday pecan pie and I got a frozen hot chocolate but we weren’t close to finishing either!

Back to an Uber… but this time Uber matched us to a yellow cab….🤢. How do they always manage to get you so car sick??

We finished the night out with “The Ride!” It’s a great tour through New York with comedians as the tour guides, floor to ceiling and full ceiling windows, and street performers as you stop at various places. So much fun!

As soon as we got on, the asked “Katie” how her birthday trip was going, how she liked shopping in SoHo, and how the weather was for ice skating. They said it’s so fun to be on a trip with your aunt “Kaitlyn” - were you named after her!? Our alter egos didn’t last long before they figured out our real names, but it was super fun throughout! \240There was even a street performer singing happy birthday to Kate!

Today started with breakfast at Liberty Bagels. The review was good: “Oh my gosh, I’d move to New York just for these bagels.”

Then it was off to Dry Bar for blowouts, followed by awesome makeup lessons at Shara Makeup. The woman was so helpful with so many techniques!! We loved the looks.

We headed to the library but were running a little late for the tour, so we ended up looking around a little on our own then running back to the hotel for a quick costume change!

Next up was a live fashion show!! So much fun. We had a few different designers and saw a lot of cool stuff… and a lot of weird stuff!

Next up was Madame Tussaud’s! \240We had a lot of fun recreating all the different celebrity poses!

After Madame Tussaud’s, we went to Bryant Park to do the bumper cars on ice! \240It was really fun. Next we headed back to the hotel to change for dinner and happened to look up and see Kate on a billboard!

We got ready and headed to an amazing restaurant where… I messed up and made reservations for tomorrow night instead. All of the servers at the restaurant are Broadway hopefuls and they sing and perform throughout the meal! \240Undeterred from checking it out, we hung around awhile and eventually snagged a standing spot at the first come first served bar. As soon as our food arrived, a gentleman got up and offered Kate his seat, which was so kind. As we were there, so many performers came right up to Kate! \240She told me God had a plan to make the night even better - if we’d have had that table we wouldn’t have been nearly as close to the performers. It worked out perfectly. As she said - serendipity.

After dinner it was time for a show! We saw Six, about the Six wives of Henry VIII. It was incredible. The costumes, the voices, all of it was spectacular.

We headed back to the hotel with a quick stop in the Hershey store to try the Reeces hot chocolate. Time for sleep - we’ve got two more days to go!

After the pizza, we met a tour guide that took us to the 9/11 mamorial. He had the awesome stereotypical New York accent! He was very informative about 9/11. He talked about the timeline of it and about what they do to honor the people who where killed (like how they put a white rose in their name if it is their birthday). Then, he dropped Kristin and I off at the museum. We walk through it. The museum was truly touching and was very well done. I think that it is a good thing to remember and learn about that day.

We started with breakfast at La Parisienne - so cute and so good! \240I had a ham and cheese croissant and Kate had a croissant and a pain au chocolat. Delicious!

From there, we headed toward Battery Park, the southern most part of Manhattan. We stopped at Trinity Church, where we saw Alexander and Eliza Hamilton’s graves. Kate loved it and was singing Hamilton the rest of the morning.

From there, we got a quick picture with the Charging Bull at Wall Street, then headed to Castle Clinton to check in for the Statue of Liberty!

We jumped on the boat and headed out to the island. Climbing up to the crown was awesome and amazing to see how it’s constructed. The outside is actually very thin and the inside kind of looks like the Eiffel Tower - which makes sense because Eiffel was the architect for the interior!

After the Statue of Liberty, we headed over to the helipad for an awesome tour of all of Manhattan. We went down to the Verazzano Bridge and all the way up to the top of the island with our pilots pointing out all the landmarks along the way. We saw everything from Central Park (huge!) to Yankee Stadium to Madison Square Gardens to all the famous skyscrapers.

When we finished, we were very late for our next tour because they were running slow at the Helipad, so we booked it over to St Paul’s… with a quick stop off for a slice because we were starving!

We started Saturday off at Sarabeth’s for breakfast on the south edge of Central Park. It was very good! We were supposed to go for a horse carriage ride then, but the city had suspended the horses due to the weather, so instead we took in a little of Central Park on foot. We saw so many dogs out loving the snow!

After that, we Ubered to RiseNy which has a cool little museum with the history of NYC followed by a “ride” like Disney’s Soarin’ that takes you through the New York streets and sights.

Next up was the Tenement Museum, which was very cool. We were told the story of Joseph and Brigid Moore, Irish immigrants after the potato famine. We got to see the building (and apartment!) where the Moore’s had lived. The guide was great and would definitely recommend, but would’ve been even better if we’d have found a Coke before. We were wiped out by this time!

After the tenement museum, we went up to Macy’s on 34th and then stopped at Shake Shack for a quick bite to eat.

From there, it was back to Central Park to meet our house, Michelle, and see the park! It was cold but so much fun.

We needed to change clothes and get our bags, so walked back to Times Square, got changed, and headed to the Mandarin Oriental for afternoon tea overlooking Central Park. The views were amazing and it was an awesome way to finish our trip before the limo came back to take us off to the airport!