We got to Meghan's and spent some time catching up before heading to the first of many of our favorite restaurants: Cafe Frida. We had some great Mexican food and lamented that this could really be our last time eating there... and then we walked next door to Shake Shack to share a concrete. If you're not familiar, their frozen treats are heaven on earth. The best vanilla frozen custard with yummy mix-ins... we were stuffed! We lumbered over to Riverside Park to snag a spot for the fireworks show. There were five barges shooting fireworks off all along the Hudson River, so we were bound to have a good view. Here are a few shots from that night:
We missed the fireworks our last few summers in NYC, so it was really nice to see them this year.
The next day, we got to experience street parking in a more quintessential New York way. Everyone was back in town, and the street cleaners were coming through. We had to move our car for the street cleaners, but there was no open spot to move it to. We ended up double-parking (which is apparently illegal now, but everyone still does it anyway) and sitting in the car until street cleaning hours were over. However, somebody jumped the gun and pulled back into a parking spot 30 minutes early, which prompted EVERYONE, including us, to do the same - within 5 seconds, the entire left side of the road was full again. Everyone continued sitting in their cars, and 15 minutes later, the street cleaners showed up. We had to jostle back to the right side, and as the street cleaner came through, cars filed in behind it the millisecond there was any space. There was jostling and aggression like we've never seen! A car or two got nudged out and lost their spots... and again, in under a minute, the entire street was full without a single open parking spot. Wow! Glad we didn't have to deal with this on a regular basis when we lived here. We sat in the car until the designated time just to make sure we didn't get a ticket, and then we got on to other things.
Our plan for our first day (and actually most days) was to lounge in Central Park and take it easy. Today was the only day that really happened. We picked up lunch at Lenny's, our old favorite sandwich place, and headed to the park. On the way, we passed by our old building and tried to get a glimpse of what the new inhabitants of our apartment had done. It was so weird seeing other people's stuff there!! They had even more plants than we did on the deck, and we could see our old air conditioner still in the window... so strange not to be able to go up there...
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| View from the north end of the Great Lawn |
That evening, Meghan and I went for a run in Central Park. It felt just like old times with my favorite running buddy! Then, Tom and I had dinner at another favorite, Amber, and went downtown for drinks with a few of our NC friends who happened to be visiting at the same time. We had a lot to catch up on - they're having a baby, we've been traveling all over the country, etc. It was fun.
Wednesday, we went to Good Enough to Eat, a favorite brunch spot with better grits than I've ever had in the south. We didn't get a chance to go to our other fave, Sarabeth's. Next time... After brunch, we walked around the UWS and through Central Park. We hung out for a bit on Sheep's Meadow before heading farther east.
From here, we went to Dylan's Candy Bar - somewhere I'd always wanted to visit. The candy is EXTREMELY overpriced, but I had a blast just looking around at all the candy inside. I think Tom didn't mind it, either. We collected a small bag of goodies and were on our way.
After this, we walked to Times Square to visit another NY bucket list spot: Dale & Thomas Popcorn. Unfortunately, we didn't find out until we got there that Dale & Thomas had closed permanently... at least the trip to Times Square was somewhat productive, though - we found a birthday present for my brother there. We'd also thought about going to Max Brenner's chocolate shop, but at this point, we'd walked many miles, and it was getting late, so we went back to Meghan's. The three of us went to dinner at Celeste, another one of our favorites. This Italian restaurant has the BEST pizza in the world. Simply nothing else can compare.
After dinner, Meghan suggested we go down to the High Line. This is a newly-opened park of sorts that runs along old elevated railroad tracks. It's super cool - you can read more about it here. When we got there, it was dark, but there are always tons of people, and it's well-lit. It was quite peaceful to walk around here on a summer night! The pictures we took here didn't turn out very well, so the best way to see what it looks like is to click the link above.
Thursday, Tom went to the New York Times building to visit everyone and have a meeting with his team since he's still going to be working remotely for them. I went to Columbia to visit my old co-workers and participate in a friend's baby shower at the Journalism School.
When I got into the J-school, my old boss had retired my "jersey" in the rafters. His nickname for me was Radar (from the TV show M*A*S*H). He had also posted a picture of my brother, a picture of our cat, a flamingo magnet I brought him from Palm Beach, and a post card we sent him from our trip. AND he made a lemon cake. Too funny. I had a great welcome back and wished I'd had more time to catch up with all my former colleagues! It was great to see everyone.
Tom also had a good visit - he and his boss didn't tell the rest of their team he was coming, so he showed up to a mandatory lunch meeting and surprised everyone.
We reconvened and headed to Brooklyn for dinner with some of our good NY friends. We had some delicious food at the Brooklyn Fish Fry. Then, we took a cab up to Astoria, Queens, to meet a few other friends for drinks at a Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden. We'd never been to either of these places, and we didn't go out of Manhattan that often when we lived in NY, so it was nice to get more of a taste of some other areas. Both of these were very cool, and we had a great time catching up with some other NY friends!
Friday, we had lunch with Tom's aunt and cousin at yet another favorite: Five Napkin Burger. Then, we had dinner with my cousin at Nonna's - our very first favorite Italian spot right around the corner from our old apartment. As you can tell, our days in New York became a lot busier than we'd originally planned. Still, we wouldn't change anything about it - we got to see a lot of great friends & family, ate at most of our favorite restaurants, and got to hang out in our old 'hood. Meghan left Friday night for Bermuda, but we stayed at her place one more night and left first thing in the morning. It was so great to see her for a few days, too, and she was a fabulous host!
Saturday morning, we got up bright and early, took one last stroll through Central Park, and made our way south. Just as we'd started feeling like we were really back home, we were leaving again... it was a sad feeling. We really loved living in New York, and we'll always look back on those years fondly, but we're moving on to the next exciting phase!
Up next: Philadelphia
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