What a whirlwind weekend. Friday afternoon we drove down to NYC for a weekend of shopping. In reality, it was a day of shopping after spending Friday and today driving, but it was totally worth it.

After getting into the hotel late on Friday, we were all ready to just get some sleep so we could wake up early on Saturday. In our exhaustion, we just checked into our suite at the New Yorker. Mom and Sam immediately crashed on the pull out while I watched a little TV in bed. Right before crawling into bed to sleep, it dawned on me that we must have an amazing view from our room on the 38th floor, so I went to the window to look out. Because we were so high up, it was a bit dark out with the lights of Times Square off in the distance, but I noticed just outside my window what appeared to be a table and chairs. This was my first inkling that we might have a terrace attached to our room. Of course, with the pull-out blocking the only area where a door could be, I couldn’t really investigate until morning. Upon waking up, though, we were to find the huge private terrace with the most amazing view ever:

Since Sam wanted to at least do a little something touristy, we all walked down to the Empire State Building, where mom and Sam went up to the observation deck while I had coffee with Jack and Amanda, who had taken the train in from West Point. That done, we hopped the subway to Union Square so we could hit up the bookstore and Forbidden Planet before heading to lunch at Pie by the Pound, home of the best pizza ever. From there, we head back to the hotel for a short break before getting to the real shopping.

And shopping we did. After two hours spent in the nightmarishly packed Macy’s, we hit up H&M before mom, Jack and Sam were all shopped out. Still ready to spend, Amanda and I went down the block to Express, where we proceeded to spend a couple more hours. By the time we were done there, we were both exhausted and broke. And, for me at least, in need of a closet culling. Some lucky people are about to end up with a lot of donated clothes.

After relaxing a little more, we head off to Junior’s for dinner before ending the evening at Toys R’ Us and Sephora, where surprisingly, no one bought anything. Heading back to the hotel, exhausted, we all stayed up just late enough to watch Michael Phelps with his 8th gold medal during this Olympic games (breaking a record, I believe), before passing out only to wake up this morning still tired but ready to head home. All in all, a very successful, though short, weekend. Now I’m off to make room for my new clothes.