NYC wedding weekend day 4....going home

Got up Monday morning feeling pretty darn good!

We showered and got all packed. Because we were in one of the 'upgraded' rooms, we went down the hall to have breakfast. That really was a nice perk!

Don and Sheila, the groom's parents were leaving soon so we all said our good-byes. It was lovely wedding and I know they are very proud of their son and his new wife. The 8 of us that had arrived together would leave together on a later plane.

Left our bags in the rooms and off we were to do as much as possible in the time we had left.
Our first order of business was to take the subway to NBC studios. We all really wanted to get to the TODAY show and see if any of us could get some 'on air' time. Well, Al Roker thought Bob looked like one of the camera guys, so Bob was lucky enough to get some time on air! Bill was standing just behind him smiling! That was a lot of fun. We all were calling people on our cell phones to watch for us on tv!

We then walked to Central Park and took one of the carriage rides through the park. We were total tourists, but, it really was nice and we all enjoyed it.
After walking around a bit more, we went to the subway again. Our destination now was China Town.
Donna had the address of a shop were if we said 'Alex, the driver sent us' we would gain access to all of the really 'special designer' bags!! A very mysterious event. They unlocked a portion of the wall inside the shop and we all went through the door and up the stairs to see what treasures we could find. Kinda creepy! I didn't really need or want anything so I went back down and stood outside with Bill. The shopkeeper told us to either come in the shop or go away. Our presence in front of the shop was bad for business. Donna and Celeste came out with their purchases in plastic bags and were told to NOT open them until they were away from the shop.
We walked away to find watches next. There was haggling on prices and watches were purchased.

Time to get back to the hotel to check out and have lunch before we left for the airport.

We checked out and went to the rooms to collect our things and the doors were locked. We had to get our suitcases out!
Security had to let us in. When we got all the bags, we then checked them with the hotel for about an hour and a half. We decided that we would have lunch at Fat Annie's. We had been told that they had the best burgers in town. Bill and I shared a burger because I still didn't know if my stomach would want to eat too much.

When we finished eating and collected our bags again we went out to wait for our driver to take us to the airport. He was already there for us so, no waiting. We had a quick trip to the airport, checked in, got through security and had plenty of time to wait. We ended up sitting at an airport bar. We all sat as we watched the Dow Jones DROP almost 800 points!

We were all in the air and on our way home. About half way through the flight you could just smell those chocolate chip cookies. My stomach and I were ready for them.

We knew we wouldn't starve over the weekend and we didn't.

We knew we would have fun and boy did we ever.

I know everyone realized know how lucky we were to be on this very special trip together. You know almost 40 years of friendship, how can anything be better than that?

I hope we can have 40 more.