Throwback Thursday | Travel Plans.

Sara and I had a two hour FaceTime on Saturday afternoon to nail down a few details for our trip next week. The weather forecast isn't great (rainy and chilly), but it is spring and hopefully the forecast is just plain wrong. Still, we don't have high hopes.

We have only two definite things planned to do:
1. see Claire Danes in Dry Powder Thursday evening (Sara managed to get tickets and that's really the reason for the whole trip); and
2. meet up with a friend of mine Saturday morning.

So we spent that two hours on Saturday talking about where we'd eat! Sara pulled it all into a map:

And I couldn't help thinking about how different all this is from our first trip back in April, 2008. I pored over blogs and probably even a guide book or two looking for recommendations. Apart from a quick trip (for a business lunch) in 2007, I hadn't been to New York since college and this was Sara's first time. We were definitely newbies. without iPhones, Yelp or Google Maps!

We landed at La Guardia with hotel reservations and The List.

(which I still have!)

A piece of paper - filled on the front with Places to see/Things to do and on the back with Food. We managed to have a great time and I don't remember being disappointed by anything. Although Sara was for sure disappointed by the carriage ride through Central Park (I do have to agree with her that the smell was...tough to handle!)

I compiled a day by day summary of what we did for our scrapbook.  Fun to see that three of the restaurants we tried back then are on this year's list too (Fig & Olive, Blue Ribbon Bakery and Isabella's).

We'll also see Central Park, plenty of the Village and maybe even a yarn shop or two. And we'll also ride the subway. I doubt we'll keep up the pace of that first visit, though; I'm amazed how much of the city - even Brooklyn! - we covered in just a few days.

But I'm sure we'll have fun. no matter what.