New York Trip: Day 1

We went to New York for a week in October and I'm just finally getting around to reporting on it! It was such a great trip! We took a red eye flight and landed in NYC around 6 a.m. on Sunday. We've done red eye flights before and they've worked out great for us. This flight, not so much. The flight itself was great, lots of excellent movie choices and little turbulence, but we each got about 30 mins of sleep. We were Dead. Tired. when we arrived. But we were in NYC!!

Our first stop was our hotel to see how early they would let us check in so we could nap. Unfortunately, we couldn't check in til at least 2, so we freshened up the best we could and headed to church at the Union Square ward.

We LOVED this ward. I'm pretty sure I thought at least twice "we should look into moving into this ward." The people were so friendly and fun! We made friends with the lady sitting in front of us and she gave us an excellent lunch recommendation. In sacrament meeting, someone held up a banner they had made to celebrate the General Conference Puerto Rico temple announcement. The speakers were great, despite how tired we were. The building was also so cool. It was a brownstone style building which had four different levels and an elevator to get around.

After church, we wandered the neighborhood and got food. We found excellent hot chocolate at Max Brenner Chocolates and had pizza at Joe's Pizza. Joe's Pizza is pretty famous, having been featured in movies like Spiderman, and they sell by-the-slice pizza, which was more delicious than I was expecting.

After this, we couldn't handle our exhaustion any more, so we headed back to the hotel and took a 3 hour nap. Best nap of my life! We ended up being super grateful for our nap because once we woke up, we went to what ended up being our favorite activity of the week, The Color Factory. I'm not totally sure how to describe this except its an interactive museum type exhibit that celebrates color. It was SO. MUCH. FUN.

A colorful macaroon conveyor belt

 There was color EVERYWHERE, from the ceilings to the floors to the treats. Many of the exhibits had free treats including ice cream and macaroons.

One sweet exhibit was a booth where you sat across from your partner and used colors to draw and describe each other. At the end of the exercise, you give them a card with a color based compliment. I thought it was an excellent marriage building activity!

Another favorite activity was the giant ball pit. We easily spent 30 minutes in here playing around, taking pictures, and sliding into each other! It was so fun! At the end, we had blue gelato.

Another favorite exhibit was the black and white room where you walked through a flow chart which determined your color personality. We had a lot of fun reading through all of the options.

And of course, who wouldn't love the giant dance room?

After the Color Factory, we had dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant and then headed back to our hotel for a really good night of sleep, despite our earlier 3 hour nap.