After checking with Marji and finding out that they were doing ok, Bruce and Mario caught a plane last Wednesday for New York ... Flying in coach - but across the aisle from each other - the flight left Houston over an hour late due to weather earlier in the day at New York (and lots of floods in Pennsylvania and Delaware). The inflight movie was Aquamarine http://imdb.com/title/tt0429591/plotsummary - a fun mermaid story - about discovering true love ... We got into New York about midnite - or pretty much on time ... We had pre-ordered a car from Carmel - 212-666-6666. https://carmellimo.com/ Highly recommend them - the price was right and the car was comfortable enough. Beat sharing a shuttle with 10 other people and much faster and about the same price as a cab. We got checked in at the hotel and walked down to Times Square to see what might be happening. Thought we were going to eat at Hard Rock since their sign said they were open 'til 1 but at 12:30 the doors were locked tight. We wound up stopping by the 24 hour McDonalds and grabbing burgers (and apple pies of course) to go ... and headed back to the room for our light night meal.

Thursday morning, we got up (no not early) and headed down to SoHo so Mario could do some light shopping. He needed a purse and some sunglasses for his sister, and wanted a SoHo t-shirt and some sunglasses for himself. After coming back from SoHo, we stopped off at the Hard Rock and ate lunch - and then headed back to the room to chill and rest up for the evening of Madonna ... Although the temp was very nice when we headed down to SoHo (mid 70's), by the time we got back to the hotel it was pushing 90 ... not hot compared to Houston or Mexico - but hot enough in any case ...

We are both members of the Madonna fan club and as such, were able to buy our tickets during the pre-sale ... Our seats - the concert was in Madison Square Gardens - were in row T ... We were about 20 feet from the center runway - and row S was about 10 feet in front of us - so everytime Madonna came out on the runway, we filled in that space in between the 2 rows, so we were actually even able to get up closer ... The people around us were fun as well ... Michelle who works in the fashion industry started talking to Bruce almost immediately after he sat down. She's straight - so she and Bruce played who is and who isn't for a while before Michelle finally accepted with some trepidation that 99% of the men there were family ... so then they played "he's cute" for a while ... Michelle then introduced us to her friend Dorothy. Shortly later, Anthony Haden West showed up with this friend Dennis ... They started talking to Michelle (with Bruce listening of course). The guys sitting next to us (closer to Madonna) were from Miami. One of them - Mayhek - was there to celebrate his birthday and we didn't get his friends name. The concert was a lot of fun - a lot of energy - and at one point - Madonna said - Why aren't you people jumping up and down - which of course we started doing (and paid DEARLY for it in the knees the rest of the weekend). Mind you, the arena of MSG is 3 stories up from the subway - and when that many people are jumping up and down - in unison - the building shakes like crazy ... At one point, I figured we were all going to die as the building collapsed around us - but she withstood the strain and is still standing ... Although the temperature in the building was nice when we got there, one of the stipulations of Madonna's concert - probably to protect her voice - is that the A/C goes off before the concert starts - so by the time it was over - it was SUPER hot ... We got a number of souvenir balloons and stopped by the souvenir stand on the way out ... 2 t-shirts, a cup, a program ... and a LOT of money later ... we headed back to time square ... picked up some cheese cake back to McDonalds ... and to the room where we collapsed from exhaustion.

Friday morning, Mario checked the madonnalicious.com to see the pictures and discovered that in one of the posted pictures from the night before, WE can be seen in the bottom of the picture ... now that's cool ;-) we went up to Central Park and walked around for a bit ... then we took the subway down to Bryant Park. We walked over towards the Chrysler building and ate lunch in a deli nearby and then walked over to see the UN building ... We never did find the Mexican flag ... and decided not to take the tour and instead just walked back to the hotel ... Mario headed out and did a little more shopping while Bruce relaxed a bit ... That night, we saw Wicked for the 6th time ... Of course, it was as great as ever, and Bruce commented that as long as we both still cry everytime we see it, we must not have seen it enough yet ... Which is probably good, considering that we have 2 sets of tickets to see Idina perform it in London in October/November (she's there from opening in September until January 1) and then have 2 more sets of tickets to see it with friends in Houston in March/April next year ... After the show, Bruce headed back to the room and Mario headed down to Chrisopher Street and the local bars to see what was happening there ...

Saturday morning we got up and Bruce walked down to TKTS to see what we might could see Saturday afternoon. They did not have tickets for the show we had talked about seeing - so Bruce got a ticket to see Spelling Bee. The Scientologist church was having a street fair, so we did a little shopping there and ate a gyro - Bruce's original - Mario's chicken. Both were really good. Then Bruce headed over to see the play while Mario did some more shopping back in SoHo ... We ate an early supper at a little Italian restaurant called Nino's near the hotel. We had planned to go to a different one, but it was running over with people watching the soccer game on tv. The food at Nino's was really good - then we caught a cab to Union Square (near the village) where we had tickets to see Sandra Bernhard ... Her show is a combination of her comedy and some songs - generally things you knew already - but which made the comedy points even more poignant. After the show, Bruce headed back to the hotel and Mario headed to the bars.

Sunday morning we got up and checked out of the hotel. After depositing our luggage with the concinerge, we walked around and did a little more shopping. BMW ORACLE Racing, the only U.S. Challenger for the America's Cup, a large sailing vessel - was on display at Rockefeller Center. We then headed back up to Times Square where we ate lunch at Maxie's Deli. We split a Reuben and a side order of potato salad - and left food on the table when we were done ... We headed back to the hotel and caught our car (666-6666 again) and back to the airport. Mario's miles ticket was first class back and Bruce had been upgraded - so we got to enjoy the flight back. The inflight movie was Something New http://imdb.com/title/tt0437777/plotsummary - a fun movie about love and inter-racial dating and the tension it brings about. We got to Houston, headed over to Marji's and picked up Grizz - who literally went crazy when she saw us ...

Until next time ;-)

Oh, yeah - the trip pictures are finally up too ... and their are 2 albums - one for New York generally which includes shots of us at the concert - and one for the Madonna concert - which are LARGELY of Madonna. Enjoy ... http://bmmr.net and follow the link to our pictures ... The first picture in both albums is the picture of Madonna with us in the background. We actually found this pic of us ON THE INTERNET and were able to get a bigger and clearer version from the original poster.