New York City, December 2007

I flew out to New York City the day after my last class. I just beat the blizzard and arrived in the FREEZING city to a fresh coat of snow. Katie has been living in Manhattan since late August, and I stayed with her at her cute and cozy apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood. With Katie working Thursday and Friday, I was left to explore the city solo, and meet up with her after work. However, Thursday came with additional snow flurries, and even though I was able to make it to a few Christmas-y sights (Rockafeller Center, Palace Hotel Christmas tree, Lord & Taylor, and Macy's window displays)...my feet were soaked and freezing by mid-afternoon, so I hiked back to the West Side and warmed up at her apartment watching Project Runway and Top Model reruns. We met up later at Alta - a tapas restaurant/bar Katie had read about, in the West Village, and dined on some awesome fare: bacon-wrapped almond stuffed dates, tomato crostinis, and fried goat cheese balls (Katie thought any food with 'balls' in the name was worth ordering for a laugh, ha ha ha).

Friday night - I continued my solo venture by day - mostly cruising the Upper West Side, though I took a detour to check out the "Block Beautiful" in Gramercy Park, a street of picture perfect New York brownstones. At night we ate at Bread - famous for what else, different kinds of bread! After dinner and some wine, we walked around the Meat Packing District and then took a cab we met up with our high school friends Lauren and Jeff, at a fun bar in the East Village.

Saturday was our day of walking and shopping, we did brunch at Bubby's in TriBeCa, got a few token pics in front of the firehouse, prowled the flea market in Hell's Kitchen, and basically shopped all day. We spent most of our time in the West Village, which is probably my favorite neighborhood in New York. All the storefronts, shops, and residences are so picturesque, its the perfect blend of old and new. Most of the buildings are old and historic looking, but have been restored and prettied up to become scenic hot-spots. And because of it's chic street appeal, many designers have taken up residence, Marc Jacobs, Coach, and more. We did also stumble upon a Santa and elf pub crawl which was a sight to see!

As it started to get dark and cold, we headed back to Katie's apartment to change and met up with Jeff, Lauren, and Brett at a Chinese restaurant for dinner, before going back to Brett's apartment to watch SuperBad. Afterwards we walked to Rudy's - hands down one of the most random bars I have ever been to, but such a fun time! They served $7 pitchers, and gave out free hot dogs - you can't go wrong! After we were a couple pitchers deep we decided to play flip cup at our booth, acquiring plastic cups from the bar back. All in all - it ended up being a pretty good time, lots of drinking, laughs, and good times to go around. We ended up changing locations at about 1:30, taking full advantage of the fact that bars don't close until 4am in New York City! We ended up at an Irish pub around the corner, and befriended the DJ to play our favorite 80's and 90's songs, and danced around, laughing and being silly until 3:30, when we finally retired. It was a blast!