we’re finally beginning to recover from an illness that began to drag me down while we were in new york last weekend, an illness that waited to hook nicole until the day we returned home. we were both horribly sick during the early part of this week. tuesday and wednesday nights we both crawled into bed after eating soup and sandwiches and gulping down nyquil. she improved a day ahead of me–today is the first day i’ve felt quasi-normal (the goo that dripped out of my sinuses moved down to my lungs, which is a little easier…mucinex, attack!). it could have been worse. it could have happened last week. y’know, valentine’s day and all that fun stuff.last week i bought nicole flowers, which were delivered to her office that monday. i wanted her to enjoy them the whole week, not just half the week (especially since we were going to be gone for a long weekend). i also gave her roses on valentine’s day. we went to one of her favorite restaurants, coast, for dinner. she loves sushi more than i do, but i knew she wanted to go. the surprise of the destination was ultimately spoiled, cos she insisted on going mere days beforehand, and i sort of panicked and spoiled it. not a big deal, really, i could have just kept my trap shut. leading up to v-day, she’d been asking me if i had anything else planned. i had two distinct ideas, actually, but by the fifth time she asked me in as many days, i decided to scrap them both…i was hedging my bets that she had something up her sleeve. if i was wrong, i’d have fallback plans, at least. i felt bad, but i eventually admitted i had nothing specifically planned. turns out i was right–after dinner, we hopped in a cab and headed downtown. she’d booked us at the hard rock hotel, using a comp night she’d received over christmas. champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries awaited us in our junior suite, overlooking north michigan ave.

i failed to capture the room itself; only the picture of david bowie watching the bed, which was slightly creepy.

john and yoko kept an eye on the toilet…

mostly i took pictures of the chicago skyline from our vantage point…and even those were taken rather hastily. we mostly paid attention to each other, camera discreetly off. it was a wonderful night away from home. she packed an overnight bag including our work clothes for thursday. for some reason, she chose a burgundy top and dark pants for both of us. it wasn’t really embarrassing until that evening, when we met sheila for dinner. she independently chose…you guessed it…a burgundy top and dark pants. three of us, sitting at the table like a dance troupe on break.

of course, i’m the star dancer of the troupe.

anyway, we left on friday for new york. it turns out we were better off not booking jet blue, considering that their mass-cancellation crisis came down at the same time as our travels. we would’ve likely been stuck at the airport had we booked with them. we flew united instead, and were rewarded with an on-time flight–on standby, no less.

we didn’t make many plans for the weekend in new york. in retrospect, i’m glad we didn’t, because the few plans we did make didn’t work out as expected anyway. we essentially spent our time in new york living only in the moment, never giving much thought as to what came next. it’s undoubtedly a rare trait for nicole, but i think it’s one she needed to exude at the time. i prefer to operate that way, as my default, so i was certainly happy to go with the flow. i also believed our behavior to be consistent with our surroundings. in a place notorious for unpredictable events and unpredictable train schedules, i must conclude that we blended in well, beating our own drums in time to the cacophonous rhythm of the city that never sleeps. we didn’t get to do everything we figured we would do, but that’s the way the big apple cookie, um, crumbled. or something like that.

here was the view from our hotel room…this is times square on an early friday evening…

here’s a glimpse of the empire state building in the background, also from our room…

a visit to the world trade center site was in order:

we said hello to a lady downriver…

i was rather happy with this shot…(especially the tiny helicopter)…

here’s our favorite picture of nicole taken in battery park:

nicole likes this one of me:

sheila pointed out that this is too similar to the one taken of me in paris with the eiffel tower in the background and me in the foreground wearing the same coat/scart/hat combo. perhaps, but at least this time i’m looking at the camera.

we went on a carriage ride in central park…

…hung out with real new yorkers…

…and even saw a guy sleeping on the train! wowzer!

it was all over before we knew it. it didn’t help that we weren’t feeling well by monday, if only because it made the end of the trip somewhat anti-climactic.

i’d have an easier time moving there, if the opportunity were to arise. nicole didn’t like the sheer number of people and the pedestrian-friendly nature of the city–she’s rather accustomed to her car.

well, that’s all hypothetical anyway. who knows. we do know exactly what we’ll want to see the next time we visit new york. and now we know that the lights are always bright. and we know there’s always magic in the air…