Welcome to the Canuck, eh!
Merry Christmas, New York! The Wilsons were back in town again for a quick winter getaway over the holidays. I’d say it had been a while since we’d been there but we were fortunate to have been there during the holidays in 2021, and the girls had actually already visited twice earlier this year – lucky ducks!
After a relaxing Christmas day and sleeping off an amazing dinner with the Cooze’s, we headed to the airport on Boxing Day morning to start our NYC exploits soon as we could! Naturally, the city was absolutely mobbed – as is normal during the holidays – but of course one of our first orders of business that afternoon was to head down to Times Square for some NYC vibes, some shopping, and to hit the M&M store. Then a quick dinner before heading to a Broadway show that evening called Six (which the girls enjoyed much more than Josh and I did… oh well!).
I’ll give you one guess where we went for breakfast the next day – yes, Starbucks (Ryley’s fave) – on our way to another fave of the family, Spyscape. For lunch, Jenn found an awesome Canadian-themed sports bar called, appropriately, the Canuck – lots of cool Canadiana in there on pretty much every surface of the place and of course on the menu! It was a great place to watch a Canadian world juniors hockey game on TV for the afternoon for sure. We killed some time after that exploring some of the High Line as well as the Carnegie Market before our early evening performance of the Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Night Before Christmas’. The show was pretty great, good way to cap off what ended up being a busy day.
Day 3 – let’s go skiing! Where, you ask? Why, in a shopping mall of course! We took a little journey out of Manhattan to the American Dream shopping center to spend the day skiing, skating (not Jenn), and riding roller coasters (not me)! The skiing was of course no Big White, but we wanted to do it for the novelty of it, it was good fun.
the Bright lights of Dyker Heights
No trip to NYC would be complete without a visit to see the animals at the zoo, we did that the next afternoon after a lazy morning. Like the Cirque du Soleil show, we missed seeing the Rockettes last trip to the city (thanks Covid!) so were able to catch them this time for a late afternoon show before capping off the day with a fantastic dinner at Tao with our friends the McAlpines who happened to be in town too!
Jenn had mentioned wanting to go to the Dyker Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn for their crazy Christmas light display, so that was on the list for our penultimate full day of our trip. We spent much of the day moseying around Manhattan – checking out the tree at Rockefeller, visiting every floor of Macy’s, and popping into a store here and there along the way between the two. We had a hankering for an escape room somewhere in there so found one last-minute to successfully conquer (our undefeated record remains intact!). Then it was off to Brooklyn in an Uber for a self-guided tour of the amazing lights at Dyker Heights before turning in for the night.
Our final day in the city – New Years Eve – found us searching for yet another escape room (guess one wasn’t enough – and yes our streak is still intact!) before heading over to Bryant Park for some browsing around the pop-up shops and of course some skating! Always love the outdoor skating in the middle of downtown, even if the skates are the worst! No trip to NYC for us would be complete without a meal at Benihana, it didn’t disappoint! Afterwards we scurried back to our hotel, the Sheraton Times Square, ready to take in the sights and sounds of New Years Eve just down the street – on TV!
Another wonderful trip to NYC in the books!
