Our last day in New York began with brunch at Black Tap. I had read so much about this place online and was ecstatic to have the opportunity to try it out!
We made sure to arrive before it opened to get in line, we had tried eating here the night we arrived in the city but we didn't anticipate the huge line that forms outside the restaurant, so this time we made sure to get there extra early.
The inside of the restaurant is so fun, brightly colored, whimsical murals cover the walls.
The main reason people flock to Black Tap is for their over the top, insanely huge shakes.
We made sure to fully immerse ourselves in the Crazy Shakes experience. Karin and Dad got the Cookie Shake.
I got the Oreo Shake to share with the table
And James and Thomas got the cutest shake of them all, the Cotton Candy Shake.
When our server brought their shake out and put it in front of them, their eyes got huge and their smiles grew wide. They were two, very happy, little boys.
Then came the reason for our entire trip!
This trip was all centered around Ricky having the once in a lifetime opportunity to sing with the Millennial Choir and Orchestra at Carnegie Hall!!
Millennial Choirs & Orchestras (MCO) is a musical organization of choirs for youth and adults, as well as a symphony orchestra. MCO was founded in 2007 for the purpose of teaching and encouraging excellence in sacred and classical music. Its primary purpose is to offer music performance education, with a focus on the works and styles of classical composers. MCO has locations in five states: California, Arizona, Utah, Texas, and Idaho. We have attended a couple of the concerts of the Utah chapter and their performances always take my breath away and leave me with chills, it is beyond any kind of concert experience I have ever attended. When the youth and adult choirs sing together, there are so many singers that they completely encircle the audience and envelopes us with the most beautiful music.
So bringing all 5 chapters together, was such an amazing opportunity. Since there are hundreds of singers between all 5 chapters, they had 3 different performances. Ricky was in the Saturday matinee performance.
Our seats were up on the first balcony, we had the perfect birds eye view of the entire adult choir and the orchestra.
Carnegie Hall is absolutely beautiful, this was my first time attending a concert here and seeing the interior!
Back when they were curating this entire program, they had people summit ideas of what they thought the theme and focus of the concert should be. Karin submitted the idea of Nearer, My God, to Thee and that is what they picked! Karin is such an amazing woman, she is strong, faithful, giving, thoughtful, determined, gentle, strong, involved, creative, caring, patient, kind, full of energy and I seriously could keep going. She is an amazing older sister, mother, daughter, wife, teacher and friend and I am so grateful to have her as an example in my life as well as such a close friend and sister. So, it totally makes sense to me why they would chose her idea ;)
We were on the closest side to Ricky so I was able to sneak a couple pictures of him singing, we weren't supposed to take pictures .... but how could I not??
See all those people dressed in blue in all the balconies and on the left side of the audience? Those are all singers. So the music they were creating surrounded us as an audience and completely immersed us in their beautiful words and melodies.
This was an unforgettable concert and I am so grateful I got to experience it as well as support Karin and Ricky, not to mention the amazing trip Karin put together that I got to be a part of!
After the concert, we headed over to Central Park to take carriage rides!
This is always fun, no matter how many times I have done it. We did carriage rides when we were here for my 30th birthday in October, it was definitely a lot colder that time around, so they were different experiences, but both super fun.
During our ride, our driver pointed out different important places around the park. A lot of them were places were movies were filmed like Elf and Home Alone 2.
About half way through our ride, we made a stop at the plaza that was made famous by the movie Enchanted, when they did a big, over the top dance number here.
We got to feed the horses a little treat.
Such a fun day!
I have one more New York post coming that covers what we did that night, which includes trying to navigate the city when there is a surprise massive power outage :o
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