[I realize I’m a little behind in my blogging, but I wanted to finish telling this story and I have time to kill since my video is buffering and my Diet Coke is keeping me awake].

Day three started with an immense hangover. The first thing we did after packing and switching hotels was stop at a Shake Shack. This place is a mecca of hangover food. Seriously. The burgers had this creamy sauce and the fries were (dare I say?) better than Portillo’s fries in Chicago.  My shake was the only thing that was passable, but that’s probably because the brain freeze I got from drinking it wasn’t making my hangover go away.

Sunday happened to be Ben’s birthday, and the weather was gorgeous, so we decided to venture to Central Park. As a Chicagoan, I’m thinking Central Park is just a slightly larger version of Grant Park… I was completely wrong.  Central Park is the largest park I have ever attempted (and failed) to walk through. But how breathtaking! I was literally commenting to Ben at least once a minute at how beautiful everything was.

I was amazed at how “fall” everything still looked for late November, but I think we were in the city at the perfect time. We walked for about 45 minutes looking for Strawberry Fields (the John Lennon memorial across the street from the Dakota Apartment at which he was killed):

and we climbed some rocks:

After about an hour and a half of walking, we realized we were only a quarter of the way through the park (that’s when I realized it’s enormousness). We started to get lost, not caring that the sun was setting soon, and we found another couple to take our picture:

The more and more we walked, the darker it started to get, but I wanted to make it to Belvedere Castle to see the view, but instead we just took some silly self-portraits, as is our nature:

We started to head back, I was directionally challenged, and I had no idea which way we were headed even with the map in my hands.  By the time we had made it to the end of the park (coming back around), we Ben watched the Jets beat the whoever they were playing, while i took pictures of the Plaza Hotel:

Further down Fifth Avenue, we walked past Tiffany’s.  I wasn’t desperate to go inside, and I could tell Ben wasn’t either, so we passed up the opportunity. I know, I know. You’re probably wondering what I was thinking passing that by, but, well, I window-shopped. I’m not one for jewelry, okay?

We walked up toward Bryant Park and strolled through their Christmas market and watched the ice skaters and then we decided that we were famished, so we walked to our hotel, and then to John’s Pizzeria (the Original) for Ben’s birthday dinner! After dinner, we walked to a bakery to get a birthday cupcake… and it was closed.  I was so bummed.  Everyone needs cake on their birthday, right? We found another “about to close” bakery and Ben picked out a little chocolate pastry. When we made it back to the hotel, I lit a match and sang the birthday song. This was the most rich pastry in the world. It was SO chocolaty that it was almost too much to handle, so we put it in the fridge for later. And our night ended falling asleep watching Dexter. Ben says that it was his perfect birthday, and I say it was my favorite day in the Big Apple.