Last weekend I was fortunate enough to have a New York escape with Lou in the Bronx. For the first time I took BoltBus, and not a Chinese bus - it was legit, and nice that it was only $10, but the internet was kind of shoddy. Oh well. How privileged American of me to complain about the INTERNET I am getting on a bus. Got in a bit after 8 - Lou picked me up in Manhattan and we headed off to the Bronx where he resides. That night we took it easy and just chatted it up and watched the teli.
The rest of the days were jam-packed. We had some breakfast Friday morning, then metro'd it to Manhattan to meet Christine.
First stop - coffee - then High Line Park. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a (via Wikipedia of course)1.45 mile section of the former elevated freight railroad of the West Side Line, along the lower west side of Manhattan. Basically its an elevated park with nice views of...well, Jersey, and parts of the city. It's a nice place if you want to pretend you are removing yourself from the hustle and bustle of the city, and I'm sure as they keep working on it there will be cafes and whatnot in addition to the ice cream and other vendors that I saw when I was there.
Once we'd had our fill we walked over to Chelsea market, a huge indoor hodge-podge of gourmet grocery stores, produce shops, bakeries, and perhaps most importantly, the Food Network studios. Unfortunately we didn't see Bobby Flay or any of the other FN celebs out and about.
We did, however, get our fill of free samples from random places. Having worked up an appetite we decided to head over to the place we had selected ahead-of-time for lunch: Cafeteria. We were attracted by the fun-sounding menu as well as the potential for seeing celebrities like Bobby Brown (lol) - or so the internet said. We started with these macaroni and cheese spring rolls with a smoked gouda dipping sauce - legit. Meanwhile we split a carafe of Wildberry Mojito.
While delicious and refreshing I can't say I tasted any alcohol. Maybe I looked too young and twinkish. For my meal I had a beef brisket sandwich with more gouda, caramelized onions, etc. It was really tasty but a bit on the salty side. Once we had our fill we walked around the city for a bit, even hitting up Toys 'R Us in Times Square. Finally it was time to head back to freshen up for the CT barbeque.
Our sophomore year roommate Mike was having a farewell BBQ in Darien, CT that evening since he was moving to London come August. Now Darien is "rich Connecticut" - his house was borderline mansion and has Renoir painting in it. NBD. Having always missed his summer BBQs, and since it's only 30 minutes from the Bronx, we decided it would be fun to go. Indeed it was! The people, though conservative, were surprisingly friendly, and in no time I was blackout! There were burgers, some volleyball, and obvoiusly plenty of booze. We stayed until almost 3am, when we heard water coming from the "boiler room" - it turned out something in his bathroom got fucked up and was gushing water through the floor into the basement. Time to go!
Next morning I had a nasty hangover combined with 4 hours-ish of sleep, which was perfect since we were spending the day at Jones Beach. FML. We got sandwiches at a deli beforehand, then drove the maybe 45 minutes to Long Island along with Lou's friends Danielle and Lauren, whom I had met a few years earlier when the came up to BC. The water was a bit violent, but perfect temperature wise. I got my ass kicked by the waves - my stomach got cut up from being thrown into the ocean floor, but at least it knocked the hangover out of me. The journey back home ended up being a 2 hour ordeal thanks to fuckass traffic. Meanwhile we were running on empty and freaking out about breaking down. Fun!!!
After chilling in Lou's pool back home, that evening was the St. Theresa's Parish festival back in the Bronx with Danielle and Lou's other friend Charlie. I hate carnivals and things like that, but thanks to the colorful characters like Guidos, Albanian badasses, 13 year old sluts it was entertaining. I had a doner from a Greek place, and we all split a bag of Zeppole which were quite good. Instead of going and blowing money at bars afterwards, we thought we'd go to White Plains for some drinks and a movie - the 12:30 showing of 'Orphan'. AMAAAAAAZING. I was falling asleep for the first 20 minutes but then was on the edge of my seat for the remaining half an hour. Another late-ass night, we headed home 3ish.
Sundays's plan was the Bronx Zoo, the country's largest Metropolitan zoo. The only problem with largeness is that it subsequently takes 5 hours of walking in between each animal exhibit. We spent a good 4 or 5 hours there - watched a Sea Lion feeding, hit up the Monorail, some overpriced chicken tenders for lunch, and obviously saw a shit ton more animals.
I enjoyed, as I do all zoos, but I was a little underwhelmed. Maybe I was just too hot. Oh well. After another exhausting day Lou took me back to Manhattan for my 5:40 bus trip, this time on Megabus, to Boston. The ride was tolerable, though for the first half I thought I was going to die of pneumonia it was so cold. Got back into Boston after 10 - in the blink of an eye the weekend was over. Sigh...and so went my first farewell to an East Coast friend before Andorra...unless he comes to visit in the next couple weeks ;-)
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