{"id":7587,"date":"2010-11-26T12:09:54","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T17:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/i-heart-ny\/2010\/11\/thanksgiving-in-a-new-york-minute.html"},"modified":"2017-11-08T11:46:13","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T16:46:13","slug":"thanksgiving-in-a-new-york-minute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/i-heart-ny\/2010\/11\/thanksgiving-in-a-new-york-minute\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving in a New York Minute"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Thanksgiving holidays is supposed to be about
\nspending time with family and friends, eating a ton and watching the Macy’s
\nThanksgiving Day Parade on television from the comfort and warmth of your own
\nhome…right?<\/p>\n

\"grayspapaya.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Wrong! We
\ncelebrated our first Thanksgiving in New York by dragging my parents to the
\ncity to watch the parade in person. Our
\nPriceline hotel put us in Long Island City and just a short subway ride to
\nCentral Park. We arrived in NYC Wednesday
\nafternoon and hit the town running! Our
\ntrip this time included a stop at Gray’s Papaya at 72nd<\/sup> and
\nBroadway. Brett had been dying to eat
\nthere and my parents loved the scene in Fools
\nRush In<\/i> when Selma Hayek’s character had the famous hotdogs shipped in for
\nMatthew Perry.<\/p>\n

After stuffing ourselves silly, we headed down to the
\nAmerican Museum of Natural History where they were blowing up the balloons for
\nthe parade. The preview of the parade
\nwent from 3:00-10:00 p.m. and it looked as though most of New York had shown up
\nto check it out. We got in line with all
\nthe other sightseers and started snapping away.<\/p>\n

\n\"macysstar.JPG\"<\/p>\n

\n\"CIMG0515.JPG\"<\/p>\n

\n\"spiderman.jpg\"<\/p>\n

I know that the parade is geared towards family and
\nchildren. And I certainly remember how
\nexcited I was watching it on television as a child. I can’t imagine how pumped up I would have
\nbeen as a kid getting to be there (after all, I was leading this whole expedition). But, as a childless adult, I also still have
\nthe ability to call “crazy” when I see it.
\nParents, but really more so the kids, were just acting the fool at this
\nevent! The children were running around like they had just eaten crack-pops and strollers turned into battering
\nrams. (I’m pretty sure Brett only had 9
\ntoes intact by the time we got home)<\/p>\n

\n\"survivor.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Things were going fine until some delinquent, hyped up six-year-old (looking) child with a parent not<\/b> paying attention knocked down my 59-year-old father. As in laid him out flat! My dad ended up with a bloody nose, cut chin
\nand hands and bruised knees.<\/p>\n

As I scraped him up off the concrete sidewalk before
\nanother tank<\/s> stroller ran over him, I thought briefly, “Maybe we should have
\njust watched this on tv at home?” Nah…he’s
\na trooper!<\/p>\n

Ok, so I noticed the next morning my dad walked with a
\nslight limp, but it sure didn’t slow him down. I know exactly where I get the urge to take so many pictures from!<\/p>\n

Figuring out the holiday subway schedule was
\na little tricky and we ended up watching the parade from 64th<\/sup> street
\nand Central Park West in between buildings that protected us from the wind. While we couldn’t see much of the marching bands
\ngoing by, we had a great view of the balloons!<\/p>\n

\n\"kungfupanda.JPG\"<\/p>\n

\n\"shrek.JPG\"<\/p>\n

\n\"smurf.JPG\"<\/p>\n

\n\"buzz.JPG\"<\/p>\n

The parade was amazing<\/b> to see in person and was well worth the effort (and bruises) it took to get there. We (me & my dad) couldn’t stop taking pictures! We loved it when one of the celebrities came down the street. OK, some we didn’t know, but we were in luck. Two cute little teeny bopper girls perched on a ladder had the best seats in the house and you would have thought Brad Pitt himself walked right up and pinched their hineys the way they were screaming.<\/p>\n

\n\"kanye.JPG\"<\/p>\n

It took me a minute to find Kanye West on his float. For some reason I thought he was the person on top of the apple, so I was busy taking pictures of that.<\/p>\n

\n\"jessicasimpson.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Jessica Simpson’s float stopped right in front of us for what seemed like a full minute! I wanted to yell, “You’re hair just looks wonderful, honey!” so that way she would feel good about how great her hair looked and maybe that would soften the blow she realized that jacket was not a good choice.<\/p>\n

\"dumpliings.JPG\"<\/p>\n

In true Christmas Story<\/i> style, we headed over to Chinatown for Thanksgiving Day lunch. Why have dressing when you can have dumplings? There were plenty of tourists that had the same idea we did. It really felt like the holidays when it started snowing briefly! Again, we hit Joe’s Shanghai on Pell Street and again<\/i>, we weren’t disappointed! If you ever get to go, you have to try the steamed dumplings…so good!<\/p>\n

I had read online that taking a trip on the Staten Island
\nFerry was a good way to see the Statue of Liberty if you couldn’t make the
\ntour. Since the tours were closed for
\nthe holiday, we figured this would work just fine. The ride lasted about 30 minutes and we got some
\ngreat shots as we floated by. We did have to hop off when we got to Staten Island and re-board.<\/p>\n

\n\"ferry.JPG\"<\/p>\n

\n\"flanigansonferry.JPG\"<\/p>\n

It was my dad’s first trip to NYC and he wanted to see
\nGround Zero at the World Trade Center site.
\nWhile I think it’s important to pay your respects to those who lost
\ntheir lives there, it never gets any easier visiting the area and remembering
\nthat September day. We have a family
\nfriend from Arkansas that made it out of the first building just 10 minutes
\nbefore it collapsed.<\/p>\n

\n\"DSC08386.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Exhausted, wet and smelling a lot like Chinatown, we
\ndecided to load up and head home…except that we had another<\/u> little side
\ntrip planned. Why wait for Black Friday
\nsales when you can hit them on Thursday<\/i>? We stopped off at the Woodbury Commons Premium
\nOutlets where stores were opening at 9:00 p.m.!<\/p>\n

\"outlet.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Running on adrenaline, our shopping adventure saw “one in, one out” store lines guarded by security, sales that would have made your heart skip a beat and more money spent than Santa himself could charge. No really, the guy in line in front of me at Spyder dropped about $3,000 in ten minutes!<\/p>\n

The whole scene was simply just glorious!
\nWe didn’t end up leaving until around 1:00 a.m. and by the time we made
\nit back to the Capital Region and were in bed, it was nearly 4:00 a.m.! Hardcore enough for ‘ya?<\/p>\n

Our first Thanksgiving went by in a New York minute, even
\nif it was more like 22 hours!<\/p>\n

\n\"timessquare.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Happy Thanksgiving Y’all!<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Thanksgiving holidays is supposed to be about spending time with family and friends, eating a ton and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television from the comfort and warmth of your own home…right? …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":11739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,145,189],"class_list":["post-7587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade","tag-nyc","tag-thanksgiving"],"yoast_head":"\r\nThanksgiving in a New York Minute - I Heart NY Y'all By Heather Flanigan<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/i-heart-ny\/2010\/11\/thanksgiving-in-a-new-york-minute\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thanksgiving in a New York Minute - 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