Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 --

We went to dinner at Osteria del Circo, a nice Italian restaurant, which we were trying to get a reservation in Vegas for Valentine's Day but couldn't. The main Circo restaurant is in New York, so I surprised Danelle with getting a reservation. Unfortunately, they had a large dinner party for 100 people, so we ended up sitting in the bar area which was really nice, but by the window; so a little bit colder. The food was excellent: we started with a salmon, tuna and sea nass prosciutto. My entree was the pork chops with roasted apple, Danelle had the risotto and porcini mushrooms; we shared for dessert a dark chocolate fondant with pumpkin gelato.

After dinner, I suggested a carriage ride in the park. Danelle wasn't sure she wanted to go because she was already cold and it was getting late. I wasn't sure what I would do if she really didn't want to go, I didn't really have any back-up proposal plan. Thankfully she was thinking that we may not be able to do it again and didn't want to miss out on the chance for a ride. When we started the carriage ride, the guide asked would you like a romantic ride or a guided tour? Danelle popped up saying guided tour!, which she always enjoys the extra info. So the guy ended up giving us a tour of the park and chatting to us the whole time about the different places, what movies they were in, what celebrities live where, etc...  It was a good tour, but I was getting nervous and wanted the guy to give us a few minutes of silence.

At the Tavern on the Green, they had some beautiful lights setup, a ton of trees all in blue. Some of the lights simulated snow fall. It was just amazing!  So we had two seconds of quiet and I was gathering up my nerve and then our guide was like... and you see that building with the lights on in the penthouse, that's where Al Pacino lives. Then he went on and told us where Al likes to get coffee on Sundays, and ... So we got to the end of the carriage ride, we were taking pictures and fed the horse. Now I was getting worried because I was planning on the ride, and shit.. now what. There were some Christmas lights up at Columbus Circle so we started walking towards the circle on the edge of the park. When we got to the end by the Christmas lights and overlooking the park. I stopped and proposed to her there.

It took her a few seconds to realize what was going on, she thought I was just saying something sweet. I had to take out the ring before it dawned on her. I was surprised that she was surprised; I thought the surprise dinner reservations and carriage ride were a dead give away. She loved the ring, a 1930's antique ring which initially came with a sapphire, but I have a friend in the diamond business and Tom Shane helped me out replacing it with a diamond. Unfortunately the ring was a touch too big and we had to use tape to hold in place so she could wear it the rest of the trip.

Afterwords, we came back to the hotel and got a nice bottle of champagne from a crazy bartender who set us up with strawberries and an "interesting" story about his engagement. We came back to him a few night later for our "honeymoon" drink he promised us and got another crazy story, but two free drinks.