The Nate Berkus Show-Part 3

For those of you new to this story, The Nate Show saga began here and here. After taking Chris to the airport to head to California for work and hanging out with my sister Sunday evening, it was time to get packed up. On Monday morning the 21st my oh so generous hair stylist Dutchess from Door Rouge Salon decided to treat me to a free hair day! She wanted to make sure that I was so fresh and so clean for New York. After that I spent the rest of the day absorbing the fact that I had to get packed and get to bed earlier than usual. I've never just packed for a single day before. Since I was traveling solo I wanted to make sure that I had absolutely everything that I needed. Small suitcase (with solid bright top inside) check, hand bag check, laptop check.

Fast forward to 9:30 pm, time to go to bed because I had to be at the airport at 6:30 am for my 8:00 am flight. The problem here is that I never go to bed that early, so there I laid until about 11ish. Then I grabbed a book and read until I finally fell asleep. At 5:30 am my timed coffee began to brew and I was up! Upon arrival to the airport, I parked in the long term parking lot, was shuttled to the terminal where I checked in and boarded. I'm not a huge fan of flying so after many, many prayers I was calm and on my way to NYC.

Once I landed at La Guardia I was greeted in baggage claim by this guy from Ben's Limousine Service

We'll call him Ben even though he swore that wasn't his name...fine non Ben...new name Vinny. I think he looks a bit like a Vinny don't you?

Vinny was a pretty nice guy! After he grabbed my luggage, we jumped in the car and headed to the hotel. This was not my first time in New York so I didn't bother taking the signature touristy photos of popular New York sites because I already have those. We headed to the lovely Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Since I arrived so early my room wasn't quite ready which gave me plenty of time to relax and get breakfast! The hotel took my bags and gave me a 15% coupon to the attached restaurant called Nice Matin.

 I decided to opt against this place and go for something a bit more casual and cafe style so I headed across the street to a little cafe that I forgot to take a photo of. Here are a couple of photos that I took from inside of the cafe:

The hotel was in the Historic District of the Upper West Side. I didn't know it was the historic district until I read the sign!

Soon thereafter my room was ready!

Wonder why I have two beds? Because the show told me that I could bring a guest! And since Chris wasn't able to be there I decided to ask my dear friend Monica who lives in NY to join me. They switched my Queen bed to a double to accommodate both of us; very generous of them! Here I am mastering a "take a picture of yourself" moment.

Later that day I walked around a bit and stopped at a place called Arties to get something to eat

Can you say too much food!!! Now I didn't realize that when I ordered the yummy pastrami Reuben with a side of fries that 1.) It would would be gigantic open faced sandwich that was to be eaten with a knife and fork and 2.) That it would be accompanied with coleslaw and 2 pickles. When I finished eating, the amount left pretty much looked just like the photo above. You could hardly tell I ate anything. 

Soon after chomping down this mighty meal Monica arrived!

Isn't she lovely!

It was great seeing Monica again. Chris and I hung out with her when he surprised me with a trip to NY for my 30th birthday. Monica and I literally laughed and giggled all night. Every time we tried to go to sleep, we'd find something else to talk about and giggle some more. Clearly we were both in a slumber party deficit.

Oh! and since Monica decided to wear a very wrinkled albeit very cute blue shirt to the show the next day, we decided that ironing it would be too difficult due to the design of the shirt. Next thought, steam! Let's just put it on a hanger and hang it on the shower as the hot water runs. Normally this would work perfectly, the problem here was that the hangers in the closet were headless!

They fit into these hanger insets that were attached to the rod in the closet:

 

What a dilemma! Now in my short blogging life I have learned to stretch my mind a bit more creatively. I say to Monica, maybe we can use the hotel umbrella that was in the closet somehow. She gives me a funny look like WHAT? I was convinced that since the umbrella had a hook it had to work. So we use a bit of ingenuity:

Aha! We then added the shirt:

30 seconds later Monica realized that we could actually use the whole hanger instead of just the silver clips...we were so tickled that the idea worked that we forgot about the real use of the hanger which caused us to giggle even more...

We were now in business...and the steam took care of all the wrinkles! I know the whole shirt story was completely random but we got a kick out of it so I had to share it. Now time to go to bed, we have a show in the morning!!

Tatum