NYC, y'all

This past weekend, the sisters, Chuckie and I traveled down to NYC. I had a very strict and packed itinerary planned out for us and we followed it pretty well, but unfortunately weren't able to fit EVERYTHING in... There was just too much to do.

Saturday morning started at the World Trade Center Memorial. The weather was gorgeous, so the memorial had a long line and a big crowd inside.

 

 

After the memorial, we headed north to the High Line- a park made from an old, abandoned railroad track. If you're in NYC and looking for a place to just walk and get some good pictures of a different part of town, this is the spot. 

At the High Line, we met up with our cousin Megan and her boyfriend G who drove in from New Jersey to hang out with us. The 6 of us drove from the High Line to our hotel near Central Park for a little pregaming and UofL game watching before our dinner reservations. We played the game Heads Up on the iPhone and laughed a lot.

Dinner that night was at PJ Clarke's- an American restaurant across the street from the Lincoln Center. I'd highly recommend this place to anyone looking for relatively decent dinner prices and a view.

Once dinner was over we cabbed it to Times Square, mostly for photo ops and people watching.

Oh and we had a good time photobombing just about everyone around us for 15-20 minutes. Some people are going to get some nice surprises when they get home and look at their pictures up close. :)

After a lot of photobombing, we made our way to McGee's Irish Pub. It was inspiration for the bar MacLaren's on How I Met Your Mother (one of our favorite shows) and the cast of the show has been known to make appearances from time to time. As an added bonus, the pub is Irish and it was St. Patrick's weekend, and also the bar was 3 blocks from our hotel. Sadly, we didn't run into Neil Patrick Harris, but we did rack up a large bill and played more Heads Up and laughed a LOT more. (Yes we played a game at a table in the middle of the bar and yes people stared at us and no we did not care.)

Sunday morning we were all miraculously feeling great, (I said it was a birthday miracle!) so after some showers and checking out of the hotel, we got Starbucks and walked around Central Park.

Next we were back in a cab heading south to meet some other cousins for brunch at Baracca's. The food was delicious, the Bottomless Sangria brunch deal was fun, and our company was great.

After brunch we headed to the Met- Sami's one and only wish for our NYC to-do list. We basically ran from gallery to gallery and decided the Met needs a whole weekend to itself to properly see everything and in a way you're not just running past it. But what we did see was awesome. Who isn't impressed by standing a foot in front of an actual Monet?

After the Met we went on a hunt for ice cream, which proved impossible as it was after 5 pm on Sunday and apparently no one serves ice cream (at least not where we were) after 5pm. So we decided to start the drive back to Boston and look for ice cream on the way home. After 2 hours of driving and no ice cream, we caved and stopped at a McDonald's for some McFlurries and milkshakes. It wasn't quite what we had in mind but, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Monday was St. Patrick's Day. We slept in a little, watched some TV, and left the house in time to have lunch at Border Cafe in Harvard Square. Yep, we had Mexican food on an Irish holiday. Then we spent the afternoon shopping in Harvard Square, playing Scrabble in a Starbucks (because why not?) and mostly just chilling. We redeemed ourselves later that night and made our Irish ancestors proud- we had drinks at an Irish restaurant followed by dinner. Oh and we had birthday cupcakes.

That night we watched The Departed and then just like that the trip was over. :( I think we made the most of our time in NYC and we especially loved getting to spend some time with cousins we don't get to see a whole lot.

Highlights of the trip (besides all the sight-seeing and food):
-  Laura, Sami, Megan and G got into a cab behind mine and Chuckie's and Laura got to say the line "Follow that car!" just like she wanted to.
- We watched Newsies Friday night before NYC which gave us some really good taglines for the weekend like "Headlines don't sell papes" and "Awww, Crutchy."
- I kept calling the Empire State Building the Eiffel Tower
- Playing Heads Up in the bar but especially when we had to act out "Losing Keys" and G threw his actual keys halfway across the bar.
- We took a birthday shot called a chocolate covered pretzel and it changed our lives.
- Laura and Sami took some of the cupcakes home to Louisville with them and live tweeted the journey with the hashtag #travelingcupcakes.


Happy belated 21st birthday, Sami and happy early 30th birthday, Laura!

Next week is Chuckie's Spring Break and my huge project at work is finished and turned in, so we are taking the week to get out of town and relax. Chuckie's sis invited us down to Virginia Beach for the week and since D.C. is on the way, we decided to stop and spend the weekend there before ending up in VA Beach. I haven't been to D.C. since I was 14 and Chuck hasn't been since he was 21, so we are excited to explore the city together and have a nice little vacation week.