Our New York Thanksgiving

We thought we were DONE with non-Tennessee Thanksgivings. After the past two Thanksgivings in Dominica we thought for sure we would be home this year. No. Such. Luck. Plane tickets the week of Thanksgiving were literally 5x what they are normally. So, we sucked it up and dealt with the fact that for the third year in a row we would not be killing deer or winning big money playing bingo (if you are a stranger who happened upon this blog I am sure that last sentence made us sound like huge rednecks). Anyway, after our brief pouting and pity-party, we decided to make it a memorable experience. We had plans to eat at Brittany's apartment on the Upper East Side (her apt. overlooks the river) and to meet early enough to catch some of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. According to the TV, the parade was going to be from 9-noon. Around 10:45 we left Brittany's apartment and started our walk through Central Park to get to the west side. We quickly noticed that the crowd was walking towards us and we were thinking surely the parade was not over already. When we finally got to the parade site all we saw were police men putting traffic lights back up and confetti all over the road. Our plan should not have been to go to the spot where the parade started - we should have gone to where it ended. Oops! My dad had already called 3 times to see where we were and I think he was looking for us on TV. Both my parents were mad when they thought we missed the whole thing and my dad said for us to chase the parade...so we did! We rushed down until we found a subway stop, hopped on and road to 34th street (where Macy's is, where the parade ended). Of course there were tons and tons of people but we wiggled through and got to see a few floats, bands, cheerleaders, and most importantly, Santa! After the parade we walked a ton more, I think we calculated that we walked around 4-5 miles. During all of this walking we pointed out that we would have no guilt about what we ate at Thanksgiving dinner. Three of Brittany and Jones' other friends came over and we had a great meal together. Another Thanksgiving we will always remember!

When we got off the train at 34th street and were frantically chasing the parade this man selling cotton candy was on the escalator with us. We took a quick picture just in case this was the only part of the parade we got to see!