On my last night in Virginia, Nick stopped by and mentioned he was helping his sister move from Michigan to Connecticut. We got to talking about Manhattan and said he should come visit at the end of the move if it could work out. It did! Saturday night Nick took Amtrak from New Haven to Penn Station and I picked him up there. Wanting to make sure he got the true East Village experience, first thing was dinner at Life Cafe. Since he'd had an insanely busy week and I had a pretty long day, we decided to come back to my place, pick out our first stop of the next morning and watch a little bit of The IT Crowd.
Sunday morning rolls around and AH! It's pouring out. Minor problem though - we're brave troopers. Stopped by the Dominican cafe for some breakfast and then headed over to the other side of the Village. Nick is an amazing musician and wanted to check out Cafe Wha? where Jimi Hendrix played. It was closed of course, but looks like a really awesome place and I'd love to go back when it's open. Their house band looks pretty fun! We walked around the West Village for a bit and then up to Chelsea.
Took a little break from the rain in Chelsea Market and when we came back out it wasn't too bad anymore. I'd never been to Chelsea Piers before but since we were walking past it, decided to go check it out. After that, it was over to Hotel Chelsea where many musicians, artist, writers and actors have lived and stayed. There still are some long term residents there who were grandfathered in but now it's limited to a maximum stay of 24 nights. It was a really cool place and I'm thinking maybe just for the experience I'll save some money and stay a night there just to say I did it.
Hunger hit just about then and we were thinking of where we'd like to go. Tom's Restaurant... aka the Seinfeld restaurant... sounded like a great idea so we jumped on the 1 and went uptown. The inside wasn't the same looking but the outside you'd recognize ANYTIME. The food was delicious and Nick got a coffee shake that was insanely good. Since we were by Columbia University we walked the few blocks up there and took a quick spin around. We were starting to get a little tired but decided to stop by The Dakota, Strawberry Fields and a few other Central Park landmarks before heading back down to my apartment and re-energize for a bit.
Once we were feeling awake again, it was off to my corner pizza joint for Nick to have a slice of actual New York City pizza. It did not disappoint! I'd heard there were fireworks on Coney Island that night after the baseball game so we took the F train all the way to the end. Walked around the beach for awhile, watched some of the crazy rides at Luna Park that we both admitted we would never, ever, ever ride, and then headed over to the original Nathan's Famous to wait for Meghan who was joining us to watch the fireworks show. The fireworks were pretty great for being inside the baseball park after the game! Glad there were some that night too since Nick couldn't stay for the big ones on the actual 4th of July. When they were over, we came back to my neighborhood and went to Croxley Ales until their last call. Meghan headed back uptown and Nick and I went back to my place for some more IT Crowd, wine and hanging out. Monday rolled around and we got breakfast at The Bean before Nick had to head back to DC. Such a great weekend with him!
4th of July night was an epic night I've been waiting for since moving to the city. I always thought it'd be so cool to see the fireworks in New York on the river and it was a dream come true. I ended up watching them from New Jersey with my roommate Julie and her friends Illeana (who lives in NJ right across the Hudson) and Laura. We got a spot right across from the highest Macy's barge so we got a fairly good view of them all and the Manhattan skyline as the backdrop. BEAUTIFUL! The only problem was so many people were taking pictures and recording on digital cameras, iPhones and iPads - essentially watching the whole fireworks show which was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM through a screen - that those got in the way a bit. Still so incredible though. Once they were over and the crowd broke, the four of us just stayed to take it all in. It was such a sight. While we taking in the view of Manhattan that was just so breathtaking Julie put our feelings into words so poignantly: "We live there. We work there. We play there. WOW. We are so lucky."
No comments:
Post a Comment