Patty Cakes: Maren's 30th Birthday Trip

On Olive's first day of school, which was randomly on a Thursday, after she went inside Scott told me that he had a birthday surprise for me. He said, "You need to go home and pack because we fly to New York on the red eye tonight to stay the weekend". I was like, WHAT? Not only were we going to New York he had gotten tickets to the Arcade Fire the next night in Brooklyn and tickets to the Broadway show Once. Again, WHAT? I was having a hard time computing what he was talking about. Because we were living with his sister he had made all the arrangements and since the kids were already sleeping there it was so easy.

Here we are at the airport with no kids getting ready to fly to NYC! WHAT?

It worked out perfect taking the red eye (other than we got on the subway at the airport going the wrong direction and it took us forever to get to the next stop so we could go in the right direction.) Our hotel was this new high tech situation where there aren't people and you just check in on the computer. So we went straight to our hotel and could check in even though it was kinda early. We got all ready and headed out around noon.

Our hip hotel was called Yotel and the room was like a cabin on a cruise ship. It was SO tiny. The bed moved up like a futton during the day because when it was lying flat you couldn't walk around it. And there was no door to the bathroom. But this was the awesome view.

Our hotel was supposed to be on Times Square. It was actually 2 blocks from Times Square and anyone knows that those NYC blocks are gigantic so it wasn't really by Times Square at all, it was actually in Hells Kitchen. By the time we left the hotel, we were starving so we headed out to take in some good old NYC energy at Times Square and find these really good Cuban sandwiches we had heard about. Man, those sandwiches did not disappoint.!

We were taking our selfies on the stairs and then this lady behind us asked if we wanted her to take one for us. Scott looks a little unsure.

Since the concert was at the Barclay in Brooklyn our plan was to head that direction and check out stuff in Brooklyn. Other than the bridge neither of us had really been out there before. So, first stop was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was SO crowded. But you can't beat the Brooklyn Bridge.

We made it all the way across! By the time we made it to the other side we were kinda tired and didn't have a real solid plan of where we were going next. We thought there was an outdoor mall close but it ended up being farther than we thought. And once we got there it was super ghetto and not at all what we were expecting. We thought it would be all hipster and Brooklyn but it wasn't that. If we would have known maybe we could have gone somewhere cooler. Oh well.

While we were sitting in the "outdoor mall" this girl we were talking to told us there was a park close by. We were asking her what we should go see but apparently all the cool stuff wasn't by the Barclay. So we went over and checked out the park. It was cool. It was designed by the same designers of Central Park and seemed really similar. By this time though, we had walked a ton! My feet were getting tired and we still had lots of time to kill before the concert. It was like 4 o'clock which is an awkward time. Too early for dinner but not enough time to go somewhere else. So we didn't know what to do. We walked over 20,000 steps this day (thanks to my fitbit).

We kinda walked in the direction of the concert and found a place to eat dinner. We tried to kill time at the restaurant too. The other problem was the concert started at 8, which being the old people that we now are, seemed late to have the first act. Oy! We got there so early and just sat at our seats. I was actually so tired from late night flight that I fell asleep during the opening act! But it was good because then I was awake for Arcade Fire.

The second act was this funny DJ guy and he made all the people down on the floor do these crazy dances.

Since their album was Reflektor they had this mirror guy. He was like a giant disco ball. I couldn't capture it very well but it looked so cool. The whole production of their concert was really impressive and you could tell they pull out all the stops.

We have seen them once before but this time was amazing. Seriously amazing. It was so fun. Great way to celebrate being 30. Scott and I were both surprised at 1) how dressy everyone was at the concert. They were all super formally dressed up and 2) how many of them were there in like costumes. Like they had glued mirrors on their jackets and stuff. I had no idea that was like a thing. It really proves how old we are. Wink.