these boots are made for walkin’

and that’s just what i did. all weekend.

my mom and sister came in on saturday afternoon for a little mothers’ day awesomeness, so i was given the lovely task of trying to think of the least lame touristy things we could do in the city. it don’t think it went very well by real new yorker standards, but they seemed to have a good time. first we went on the subway adventure to their hotel, where we had a view of this from the window:

at first we thought they were dozens and dozens of pillows, but eventually realized that they were probably sand bags holding some sort of tarp onto the roof. but what the hell?? what kind of establishment was that that they would need all that business? weird. anyway, i let the fam get a little settled and then we threw on our sneaks and walked to the park… and then through the park… and then out of the park… and to a delicious spanish restaurant! mmmm tapas. good stuff. if you live in the city, the place was called malaga and it’s on 73rd and 1st. delish.

we walked from there back to the hotel, where mom pretty much passed out immediately. the next morning i cam and picked them up and then came back to my place to drop off their bags and go to brunch. lucy came with, and we all went to lodge, down the street. also delish. we did some walking/shopping in soho and downtown at century 21 (not the real estate agency, calm down), and then headed back to the apartment to eat snacks and get changed because we were going to… broadway! woo!

we went to the ambassador theater on broadway to see “chicago”. it was fabulous. and for the record, i know that only 1/4 of my face is in that picture, but in all of the other tries jaime looks wicked stoned so i thought i’d be nice. but yeah the musical was great; we all loved it.

the next day the weather was GROSS, but we braved it anyway and went to the moma. where the line was out the door and around the corner at the end of the block. ugh. so we hung out in the gift shop across the street for a little bit, hoping that the line would die down, but no dice, so we braved the rain and headed uptown to the museum of natural history. we grabbed lunch at the cafeteria, and did the requisite “hall of biodiversity” tour, and finally it was time to go to the butterfly display thing. crazy! jaime was freaking out that the butterflies might touch her or fly in her face or do weird things, but i was totally cool about it, obvi. anyway, it was crazy to go through this thing. i’m usually pretty adamantly against taking pictures in museums (unless they’re completely empty, which this one was NAWT), but i had to break my own rule and take a couple because this was really phenomenal. an example:

by the time we left the nmh it had finally finished raining (and was now just gale-force windy), so we headed back down to the moma. the line was still long, but finally all of it was inside, so we decided to suck it up. they were changing a couple of exhibits while we were there so some stuff was closed, but overall we got to see some great modern art (as usual), and hang out with all the poseurs and tourists. good times. then it was back to the apartment to change, and then off to noho (i think?) to have dinner. we met up with este and my cousin kyle there, so we were one big happy family at gemma (bowery, between e 2nd and 3rd streets). it was really fun. we also managed to find time during the day to watch a couple of episodes of “planet earth” because now we were on sort of a kick.

mom and jaime left the next day, but were followed (by roughly an hour) by amy and penny quinn! we went into the city, and while amy got her hair did (that’s right), pq and i walked all around and made a lot of people veeeery uncomfortable. but two pregnant women did smile at me! and the woman and jamba juice asked how my baby was… but most other people stared and frowned, and there were a couple of “poor, young, unwed mother” double-takes. we laughed at them.

and then when mommy was gorgeous with her hip new hair, we went up to see her friend lili at the hearst publications building. it’s sort of beautiful and weird at the same time. apparently it used to be only two floors, and then after 9/11 they glammed it up and made it like 40 floors or something. the lobby had fake waterfalls. it was nuts. but we basically just paraded penny around while everyone gushed, and then played on the floor for a while. here’s a sneak peek:

but you’ll have to check the FLICKR PAGE to see the rest!

and i think that does it for me for now, kids! long post, sorry. :)