new york new york

So we've been quietly planning our upcoming vacation in New York, and finally locked in our reservations today. Here's how it all shook out:

My birthday present was preview tickets to Young Frankenstein on Broadway. As a huge Mel Brooks fan, and specifically a ridiculous fan of this movie, I was thrilled. The tickets are for the actual date of our anniversary, October 18 (which really makes them more of an anniversary present, so where's my birthday present, dude, but who's counting), so we started planning a trip to New York around that date.

For the last couple of years, we have gone to Vermont in the fall. And that has been great, but after last October's trip we agreed that we were ready for the big city again.

Of course, we go to NYC several times a year as it is, as observant readers know, but those are quickie visits to Yankee Stadium. We typically drive straight in from the north, catch a game at the Stadium, and zip back out for another casual four and a half hours in the car. It's a heck of a day trip, but it keeps us reasonably sane as hard-core Yankee fans living in the heart of Red Sox country.

So this time we decided we would stay in the heart of Manhattan again, like we did a few years ago, and do all those things we are usually too distracted by Yankee Stadium to do.

Like:

• Go to the Met (again)
• Go to the Guggenheim (again)
• Check out the Neue Gallerie (first time)
• Check up on how Lower Manhattan is doing since we last saw it
• Check out the Tenement Museum (first time)
• and a bunch of other stuff

But today we discovered that the hotel we wanted -- the one we stayed in before -- didn't have the availaibility we wanted, so we looked a bit further afield, and the end result is that our New York City Vacation has just become a Brooklyn Vacation! And How Cool Is That?

This opens up whole new vistas! I mean, sure, we'll still do all the cool museums and stuff, but Brooklyn! Home of many cool and interesting people! Home of Etsy! And Daptone! And so much more!

So we are happy and excited. We will be staying in a rather nice hotel in the heart of downtown. We will take the train to Manhattan some days. And some days we will stay in Brooklyn and do Brooklyn things.

And this is all to take place AFTER we spend several days in the Hudson River Valley, looking at the wee summer cottages some people built there in the last century. For that leg of the trip, we have actually rented a house for the duration. And this one actually IS a wee house. With a wee jacuzzi.

So, to recap: New York! Vacation! It'll be great!

What would be really great is if through some MIRACLE the Yankees are actually still PLAYING in October this year. And we can watch goddamn mutherfucking playoff baseball in New York. Among our people.