NYC- Color Factory, Broadway, etc (08.27.22)

We arose bright and early for day 2 of New York and immediately headed out to find some breakfast.

One of my favorite things about New York is that it’s really easy to find incredible hole-in-the-wall food places that don’t show up on map programs. I explained to the kids that because the competition in New York is so fierce, that the places that persist tend to be really really good. 

This is all a long way of saying that I left the hotel with three hungry kids without any plans of where we were going to eat. 

But New York is amazing and just steps from our hotel, we stumbled into a bodega/deli that served hot food. We ordered breakfast sandwiches and bagels (“toasted with extra butter please”) and a fruit cup and enjoyed a relaxing breakfast out on the sidewalk.

The kids were completely amazed by the bodega. They made me promise that we would go back there tomorrow.

The main plan for Day 2 was actually the initial reason we came to New York: seeing The Play That Goes Wrong on Broadway (more on that later). However, our tickets were for the 2 pm matinee, so we had some time to kill before the afternoon. 

So we hopped on the subway and made our way to The Color Factory.

The Color Factory is an interactive art museum (which sounds a bit pretentious) and it was super fun. The museum is a one-way path (kind of like Ikea) that has stops in various interactive rooms that explore different ideas about color. 

Here are some highlights:

A Macaroon conveyor belt (the fruit ones were best)

An echo-ey room with marimbas that created different chords. 

A confetti room (At one point Clara put a double handful of confetti down my shirt and I continued to find pieces of confetti in my everywhere for the rest of the day. Seriously, I found some that night when I took a shower).

The partner drawing booth where you draw your partner through a glass partition while both following the same prompts through headphones.

A silent disco where you put on headphones and boogied in silence

Aaaaaaand a ballpit.

That ball pit was far and away the highlight of the experience. The pit itself was probably the size of the area enclosed by the three-point line on a basketball court. We played hide-and-seek in a small corner at one point and I walked (more like waded) past all three kids multiple times without finding them. It was basically the Platonic Ideal of the old ball pits at McDonalds.

On the way in, the workers asked us to turn our phones off silent and turn their volume all the way up. I found out that they empty the ball pit and clean it every week and always find multiple phones that people have lost. Soooo, I kept a good hold on my phone 😂

After dragging the kids away from the blue gelato (did I mention the blue gelato?), we got on the subway again and headed uptown towards our theater.

We arrived in plenty of time, so we got pretzels and played cards until the doors opened. 

Our seats were fantastic.

While we waited for the show to start, the kids all eagerly scanned the stage looking for clues about what was going to go wrong:

“There’s swords! I bet there will be a sword fight!” (there was)

“I bet that elevator is going to break!” (it did. spectacularly.)

“Is that a secret door?” (it was)

etc.

The play itself was just a delight. There was a whole pre-show where the stage manager and one of the stagehands came out and tried to fix everything with gaffer tape and an audience volunteer. The actors were all hilarious and we just laughed our heads off for the entire show. 

At intermission, we bought candy and I followed in the tradition of my mother and got Junior Mints. (My mom used to sneak Junior mints into my dad’s courtrooms all the time because they were so silent to eat (paper packaging and no crunch). Clara’s m&m’s exploded when she opened them and the candy seller just gave her another pack — what a nice fellow. 

At any rate, it was an amazing show and it culminated with the entire set collapsing around the ears of the actors to uproarious laughter. 

After the show, we headed over to Rockefeller Center and got wet in a fountain. (side note: I told the kids to jump in for a cute picture. They did and when the water came up, they all got soaked. #parentfail

We then headed over to the Nintendo Store where the kids played Mario Kart on the big wall projector and I perused the complete collection of Nintendo consoles (memories!)

We then walked back over to Times Square to hit m&m’s world. The kids were delighted to wander around and we got a bag of unusual m&m flavors to share from the m&m wall. Logan also bought a shirt for himself.

After that, we went to Krispy Kreme.

M&M’s world AND Krispy Kreme?! In one day?!

Yes. We were carpe-ing the diem, thank you very much.

After Kripsy Kreme were all realizing that we were pretty hungry for real food (shocker, I know). So Clara suggested that we go to Olive Garden. If I had been by myself, I think I would have again found some hole-in-the-wall place to try, but the kids really were craving noodles. 

After Olive Garden, we made our way back to the hotel

We continued the diem carpe-ing by throwing on a movie and eating soda and m&ms. After about 45 minutes of the movie, I decided to be a responsible guardian and say it was time for bed. 

Logan got up from the bed and said “Dad, I don’t feel good. I feel like I’m going to throw up.” He made it to the bathroom and indeed emptied the contents of his stomach into the commode. He felt much better afterwards and after a quick tooth brush-ing, was asleep in 5 minutes. 

If the measure of success for a kids trip is whether you can overload your kid’s digestive system (and that really should be your measure, don’t you think?), then today was truly a triumph.