If you plan to visit New York City in the future don't make the same mistake I made last weekend.

If you live in the Hudson Valley, the odds say that most of you will plan at least one or two trips to New York City this year. I personally live in Poughkeepsie and being that I'm only about an hour and a half from the city, I make the trip a few times a year.

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Merry Christmas in New York City

The first city trip of 2023 for me was something I started planning a few months ago. Back in November, I started to explore some different options as a Christmas gift for my girlfriend. I've given jewelry, flowers, and things like that before so this year I thought I would try something a little different. I thought why not plan a trip into the city to do dinner and show? If you don't know, I'm definitely NOT a Broadway show guy but she loves shows and I thought it would make a great gift.

MJ the Musical

When I started searching online to try and find what show we should go and see, I saw a million great reviews of the new Michael Jackson show so I got us tickets to see it. After I bought the tickets I started looking around the same area to try and find a nice place for dinner after the show. The show is playing at the Neil Simon theater which is right next door to one of the best steakhouses anywhere, Gallagher's, so that's the place I made reservations at.

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The Trip

After planning everything I gave her a card for Christmas with instructions inside...LOL! The trip was planned for last Friday night so after getting out of work we drove to the city for an 8 p.m. show. We got into the city around 7, and I found a parking lot near the theater and parked. The show was AMAZING! It got finished around 10:30 and once it was over we walked up the street for dinner at Gallagher's.

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We finished dinner a few minutes after midnight so I paid the bill and we started walking back to the parking lot. Here's where things got crazy!

As I approached the lot I noticed that the gate was closed and there was nobody around. I walked closer and yup they were CLOSED!! I looked at the ticket they gave me when I parked and it said their hours are 5 a.m.-midnight. I looked at my watch and it was 12:09 a.m. We missed it by 9 minutes!!!

Not knowing what to do I called the phone number on the ticket and nobody answered. Now what? We both stood there not sure what the heck we should do!!! Stuck in the city with our car locked in a parking garage!! I said, "do we just walk around Times Square for 5 hours until they open? Do we take the train home and drive back tomorrow?" All of these things were screaming inside my head..LOL!

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Then my girlfriend says maybe we try to find a hotel for the night. I responded, "A hotel with no reservations in Times Square on a weekend is going to cost me a million dollars!!" With no other options, we walked around for while and found a hotel that thankfully had a room available. We wound up getting the room and paying a ridiculous amount of $$$ for it, add that to the $60 the parking cost me and that one mistake cost me more for one night than my monthly car payment!!

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