The Brooklyn Bridge is really cool

Today we had nothing planned, so we decided to do the Brooklyn Bridge. It was top of Lauren's list of things to do, and I had never been. We took the subway to Brooklyn and then walked the bridge back to Manhattan.

The views on the bridge were AMAZING. Amazing amazing amazing. You can see literally everything.

I loved to see the Freedom Tower and all that, but I will always love the view of the Empire State Building best. It's just so...New York. Not that the Freedom Tower isn't, but I like looking over toward the Empire State Building. Also super bummed we didn't go to the 9/11 memorial because I've heard it's absolutely breathtaking.

After our trip across the Bridge we had lunch in Chinatown. We ate at a place with a B in the window. I know, I KNOW, you're not supposed to do that. But whatevs. We did it. Nobody died. It was delicious. We shopped around SoHo for a while, and then we were in need of a fat nap. All three of us crashed on our couch for a solid two hours. I wonder how many miles we walked during this trip. 

Once we woke up from our nap we headed back into midtown to eat Juniors for dinner. If you know me you know I wasn't about to leave NYC without a milkshake from this place. Juniors, you're too good to me. 

We also got to go see Kyle and Shannon's apartment tonight. They live in a GORGEOUS studio apartment in TriBeCa. We just hung out and had drinks on their rooftop, which has a view just as gorgeous as the ones from the Brooklyn Bridge. It was also awesome to get to spend time with the fam. This was the second time I got to hang out with Ky and Shannon THIS SUMMER. That's so rare and it's a lucky thing. 

New York City, you look so good on us. 

Our Day Trip to Sayville

Of course, we took a day trip to my hometown of Sayville, NY. I think we kind of needed the relaxation after we walked SO MUCH yesterday. We took the train to Sayville in the morning and stayed all day long.

We went sailing with Jay and Deb. It was really fun to see them and to try to go out on the water. I got a little bit seasick because it was SO WINDY on the water. We had to come back in early because of how windy it was. We spent the rest of the day chilling in their new hot tub and walking around downtown Sayville. Of course we made a visit to Sayville Chocolatier

Jay and Deb fed us some authentic NY Pizza because Lauren still hadn't had any at that point and we got back on the train to get back to the city in time for our show. 

We saw A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder tonight. It won the 2014 Tony Award for Best Musical, and I can definitely see why. It was very well-written and the actors were INSANELY talented. It's the story of  a guy named Monty, who realizes after his mother has died that he's the heir to a large fortune, with 8 people ahead of him. He spends the entire show trying to kill all 8 of them off, and all 8 family members are played by the same guy. The part of the family members is usually played by Jefferson Mays, but we saw his understudy. It wasn't really my cup of tea, but I still love any chance I get to see a Broadway production. It was one of those ones where they sing a LOT of their lines and in thick British accents so you had to pay really close attention to what they were saying or you could miss major plot points. Plus I had a girl sitting in front of me who was like laying on the balcony railing and I couldn't really see that well behind her. Whatever. 

I think Bryce Pinkham, the actor who plays the lead role Monty, looks kind of like Jack Wellner from where we were sitting. That was entertaining.

After the show we went out for a drink at a bar called 230 Fifth. It's called that because the address is 230 Fifth Ave. Clever, I know, but the view is STUNNING. You can clearly see the Empire State Building right in front of your face, which I think is so cool. We had a drink there and then went to meet up with my cousin Kyle and his friends at a bar called the Windsor. I think it was in SoHo? I'm not sure. I just told the cab driver to take us to the address. 

The Windsor was kind of like a NYC Hawk, so we felt right at home. 

We got tickets to jimmy fallon

Okay, so I’m not sure if you know this, but Jesse, Lauren and I are going to New York City in August. We're seeing Aladdin, Cinderella, and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (Yeah. We bought tickets to that the DAY AFTER it won the TONY. We're good at what we do). The whole time we've been planning this trip we've been daydreaming about the possibility of going to see The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. I've heard it's pretty complicated to get tickets, so we’ve been STALKING Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for about 2 months now for inside information. I follow them on all Social Media outlets and have read COUNTLESS articles about acquiring tickets to see the show.

Learning the Patterns

So I've been monitoring the ticket website since May, and I've realized he releases tickets one month at a time, and usually releases them at the beginning of the month for the NEXT month (so he released August at the beginning of June). He also sometimes tweets out when the tickets will be released, but he hadn't done that consistently since May. At this point I figured trying to get Fallon tickets was probably going to be a lost cause.  I have the “get tickets” website bookmarked and I check it hourly in hopes of gaining information about August Ticket releases. Well yesterday I was half-assedly reading through Twitter and just HAPPENED to stumble upon this:

Hey, pals! We'll be releasing August tickets tomorrow (7/8) at 11:30AM EST. pic.twitter.com/tiohhroy8U

— Fallon Tonight (@FallonTonight) July 7, 2014

YES PEOPLE, IT WAS BY CHANCE THAT I SAW THAT. So last night I recruited like 10 people to help us try to get tickets to Fallon when we’re there in August. We gave them explicit instructions on how to do it, and figured we’d just all try at the same time. I was pretty sure that they go really fast, and you have to just happen to click on it at the right time. I figured it was a LONG SHOT, but what the hell. We had to try!

Refresh Refresh Refresh

So This morning I did nothing but refresh the Fallon page from about 10 am to 10:30, as did Lauren. We knew that in order to get tickets online you were going to have to be on the website AT 10:30 sharp. Once 10:30 hit, a lot of us got redirected to an "error" page. Those people are basically the people that don't even make it off the platform in the Hunger Games. About 5 of us (including me) were directed to this “queue” page…it was an automated page saying that we had a spot in line and not to exit from the window or else we’d lose our spot. It also said it would redirect us once it was either a. our turn or b. sold out. I reached this page first, at about 10:35. I kept that open for about 5 minutes, and then it redirected me to the calendar page. I found August 14 and RAPIDFIRE clicked it and filled out all of the information. It only gives you 9 minutes to fill everything out, and I've read stories about people losing their tickets while they're filling everything out because they took too long and other people swooped in and filled them out faster. We thought you were going to need the name and information of everyone in your party, but you don't. You just need information for one person. I wish I could tell you how many days were already empty when I got into the "pick your dates" section, but I was moving so fast that I didn't take the time to make note of anything.

Order Confirmed - Commence National Klew Day. 

I FREAKED OUT when I got to the confirmation page that said “congratulations! your order has been confirmed!”

WE DID IT. WE GOT TICKETS TO FALLON! OMG!

I still can’t believe it. So on August 14th I’m probably going to have Pizza for lunch, go see Fallon, then go straight to see Cinderella. They might as well re-name it National Klew Day. It's all of my favorite things in one day. I am over the moon.

Who's the guest going to be? 

So now, we're speculating who we think the guest will be. We've been looking up movies releasing around that time, and trying to cross of people we know it WON'T be, since they were just on the show. (One Direction has a concert that night, so it's not going to be them. Don't worry. First thing we checked.)

I have a ton of people that I hope it will be, but frankly I don't really care. WE'RE GOING TO SEE JIMMY FALLON YOU GUYS! THIS IS AMAZING!

Stay tuned for stories of our adventures. I'll write another post about the show! WEEE!!!