Last week, Mariel, Cheryl and I took a short vacation to New York. We took a redeye Wednesday night and arrived at 6:30 Thursday morning. After taking a cab to my brother's place, we took a nap before heading over to 5th avenue so Cheryl could make a few somewhat exhorbitant purchases. Afterwards, we went down to SoHo to do some more shopping, where I got a cool jacket at Replay (which, incidentally, I didn't know was an Italian brand until just now). Later we had dinner at Ecco, a nice Italian restaurant. After being berated by my brother for considering staying in for the night, we headed out to Grace, a nearby bar, which, as Cheryl described it, was "like a neighborhood bar, but nice." As if drinking mimosas and bellinis in a bar in TriBeCa wasn't fancy enough, we topped it off by ordering tuna tartare, which was really tasty. Not being able to partake in the alcoholic drinks, I entertained myself by playing "Who wouldn't you date?" with Cheryl.

Friday we met my friend Kahn and our friend Naomi at the Metropolitan Museum. I met Kahn through a high school friend of mine, and even though we've been friends for 5 years, we realized that this would only be the 3rd time we have seen each other in person. It was also great to see Naomi because she had just gotten back from a 2 year stint teaching English in Japan. We wandered around the museum for most of the day (with Cheryl making sure we avoided the scary religious art) before heading back to my brother's place to grab dinner. We rushed out to Times Square to catch 42nd Street, an old Broadway revival, complete with tap dancing, sparkly costumes, strange enunciation, and probably some jazz hands thrown in there. After the show, we met up with Kahn and Scott, a friend of ours from college, at the Times Square Brewery (which I could have sworn was called "42nd Street Brewery") for dessert. After Scott and Naomi went home, the rest of us headed down to Apple, a bar near NYU. (Are we sensing a pattern here?) The atmosphere was suitably Asian for Cheryl, and we ended up staying there until it closed.

Since we got in so late Friday night, we had a late start to Saturday. I went running with my brother along the West Side Highway since I was missing my training run. When I got back, I called up my friends Lisa and Topu, who both recently moved to New York. We made plans to meet them and Naomi at Otto in Greenwich Village since Mariel and Cheryl were craving pizza. Because of some subway stupidity coupled with Sha Sha stupidity, we ended up getting there late, but we finally arrived. I count Lisa and Topu as two of my closest friends from home, but it had been almost 3 years since I'd seen them. We spent the next few hours walking around and I even got to see Lisa's store, Star Strings, which was very cool. For dinner, my brother treated me, Mariel, Cheryl, and my sister to a yummy sushi dinner. Mmmm...wild salmon. Afterwards we went to..........a bar! This was was the most bar-y of them all, and Cheryl was not so secretly bored. I still had a good time though.

Sunday night Mariel and I had planned to meet Naomi and go to a Central Park tag sale, but when we got there, the line was 1 hour just to get in. Instead, we checked out a crafts fair where Naomi's aunt had a booth. There was a lot of cool stuff there, but we had to catch our flight home, so we didn't get to spend much time there.

All in all, I had a great time. I was happy that I got to meet up with everyone I wanted to see, and I also had a lot of fun wandering around the city.

The End.

In a completely unrelated note, I recently stumbled upon this page, which is the personal page of some guy who apparently parties with hobbits and giants. It's all very strange. Some people are not like us.

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