There's Magic To Do - New York April 2014 Pre trip report

[BONZO]

There’s Magic to do – New York 2014
(‘There’s Magic to do’ is a song from the musical Pippin which we’ll be seeing while we are in New York – more information below!)

First of all – the cast:

Me: Shaun, 52, grumpy old man!



Alison, 47, long time wife of said grumpy old man!



(Alison often needs to revert to alcohol to cope with the grumpiness! )

Alexandra, 20, oldest daughter of grumpy old man!



Laura, 18, youngest daughter of grumpy old man!



We do, of course, have some nicer family photos, but that wouldn’t be any fun!

The reason behind this trip is a “last hurrah” as a family trip as the girls are getting older and it’s going to be tricky to find a suitable time of year for us to all go away together. Couple that with the fact that we’ve now done with taking trips during school holiday time so that’s that! You don’t want to make me grumpy do you? (Alison: Noooooooo!)

This year, Alexandra will be completing her degree at Loughborough university and will commence teacher training (PGCE) at the Institute of Education in London in September. Laura will be finishing the first year of her degree course in Musical Theatre (Triple threat) at Chichester University.

Sure, like last year, they’d jump at the chance of another Disney holiday paid for by yours truly but as mentioned already there’s no way we are doing school holiday time ever again. They’ll both be going off with friends/boyfriends on summer holidays this year so they are not exactly missing out and they’ve covered most of the globe already!

Recently we’ve found ourselves with a bit of extra cash and thought long and hard as to what to do with it. Sure, the house needs a lot of updating but our shared passion is holidays. This means that the 70’s avocado bathroom suite will just have to wait another year. Perhaps if we wait long enough it’ll come back into fashion but I guess I’ll be pushing up daisies before that happens!

We mulled over what to do on the holiday front this year and decided that we could do a short break. Having started off thinking about a European break, we gradually went up the scale until we decided on New York! There were many reasons – it’s an amazing place, we didn’t know when the girls would get there (if ever), it’s do-able as a short break, and finally (a fairly minor reason) Pippin is currently showing there and winning loads of awards. Laura was in a production of Pippin last year (it was her last production at the BRIT school) and it was stunning – we went to see it 4 times! It’ll be amazing on Broadway – we can’t hold on for it to come to London!

Alison and I have previously been to New York for her significant birthday (link to trip reports here) so it’ll be interesting as to what’s changed, if our attitude to the place has changed and what the girls think of the place as it’s a significantly different holiday to Disney.
The only downside at the moment is that the weather isn’t going to be too brilliant and Alexandra will just be short of her 21st Birthday so no booze for a while although it’ll give her liver time to recover from Uni life!

So, we had decided just before Christmas that New York was the destination of choice, and given that it was festive season, we thought we’d surprise the girls with it. We often do a surprise on Boxing Day – sometimes it’s a small present at the end of a treasure hunt where they have to follow clues, and sometimes it’s a bigger present with no clues!

This time, I developed a treasure hunt, with a quiz! Firstly they had to work together to solve cryptic clues to find a number of envelopes hidden around the house – and they couldn’t start opening the envelopes until they’d found them all. (They had to work together as Alexandra is useless at anything like this, so would need Laura’s help!)

They (eventually) found all the envelopes and then had to open them one at a time and see if they would work out what the clues inside meant. I can’t remember what they all were now – they started off fairly obscure and got more and more obvious as they went on! One was ‘What is the name of a local sandwich shop chain?’ – answer was Subway. The final one was ‘The most commonly played last song at a party’, which was obviously New York New York.

Needless to say they were over the moon (once they got it)! Tears all round (not from me – but from Alison and the girls).

So – we decided to splash out a bit and go Premium Economy with Virgin (never done PE with Virgin before!), and we booked a fairly central hotel – The Hotel Edison which is just off Times Square (booking 2 rooms via Travel Republic). We are going on Saturday 5th April arriving late afternoon, and leaving on Thursday 10th April in the evening. That gives us a good 4.5 days to fit everything in!


Links:
Hotel Edison
Pippin the Musical

Let the planning commence!

[vanlou]

Not you again - I'm still reading, and enjoying, the (unfinished) trip report of your last holiday

New York sounds very exciting

[BONZO]

Don't worry - we're still posting one a day of those! I just got a bit concerned that if I didn't post the pre trip report for New York soon then it would be a post pre trip report!

[Dazed]

I will be watching this trip closely as we are visitng NY for 3nts at Xmas!

[Cinnabon]

Another watching your report as we go in August.

[Guest]

love it already...we go on the 15th April.

[Gill H]

Sounds great. We loved New York, saw 4 shows in 6 nights (2 of which were very small and inexpensive ones, and one from the TKTS booth!) and loved being able to walk home in 10 minutes from a show.

[orlandosgr8]

What a fantastic way to surprise the girls

We loved NY on our two visits, once just as a couple and once with our son when he was 8, so much to see and great shopping too

[abiknox]

Sounds like you will have a great time ! Lovely photos of the girls

[Gill635]

Brilliant time of year to go, we visited the same time a few years back and had gorgeous snow on the ground but a lovely hot sun.

You should still be able to catch the skating rinks at the Rockerfella and Central Park too


Gill x