Old Friends, New Places

A few years ago several of my Raleigh friends and I visited NYC, and ever since we've talked about doing another trip up here together. Never did I think that I'd be living here and in the position to invite them to stay up here with me for the wkd! Meg and Mel are old friends from my former church, Providence and they brought along their new friend Josie that they also know from Providence. The girls flew in early on Friday morning, we grabbed breakfast together, and then they were gracious to let me sleep after working all night and kept themselves occupied visiting WTC and the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island. We met up that evening for dinner and headed down to my favorite place in Little Italy, Da Gennaro where the food never disappoints and then over to Ferrara Bakery for some yummy Italian desserts. Side note, I actually did not watch the Duke v. Lehigh game, choosing instead to spend time with my friends and having confidence in Duke's reputation as NCAA champs so I figured I'd have plenty of other games to watch during March Madness. God graciously blessed me with an amazing sister, who does not care at all about basketball, but she loves me enough to call me when she knew I was not near a tv and give my a play by play of Duke LOSING, nixing us from the sweet 16. While I was devestated at the loss, my heart was full with how much she cared about the game for me!

Tiramisu to heal my broken heart

Saturday morning we ventured to the Upper West for brunch at Isabells, so yummy! I LOVE a good eggs benedict and they have a filet mignon benedict with an onion ring and au juo hollondaise sauce...are you drooling yet? You should be! It was so nice that we were able to sit outside and people watch. By the time we finished it was already early afternoon and we meandered through Central Park making our way to the East side where we found a big rock that overlooked 5th Ave where we watched part of the St. Patty's Day parade. After an hour of kilts and bag pipes it's all pretty much the same so we made our way down to Times Square to check out TKTS. The girls scored some great seats for Mary Poppins, we grabbed some pizza, then I dropped them off at the theater and headed downtown to the Financial District where a traveler friend of mine lives. Megan and her husband threw a fun little party, sadly I missed the rooftop part, but her balcony view was still great and she has a great view of WTC just a few blocks away. I'm so glad I could meet up with them and make some new friends/see people outside of work. Around 9 it was starting to wrap up so Jenn and I made our way closer to home to meet up with Dave and his crew. It had been MONTHS since I'd hung out with these friends I'd met when I first moved here. After hanging out for a bit I headed home to meet the girls after their play.

YUM!

CP

a lot of kilts & bagpipes

even Empire was celebrating.

Sunday morning I took the girls with me to the Gallery Church in the Flatiron neighborhood. My sister met Pastor Freddy at a conference in Louisville and recommended it to me. This was only my 2nd Sunday but since it was a smaller congregation (70+) I felt fairly comfortable there and saw several familiar faces from the week before. Afterwards we headed over to Tspn & Tbsp, a cute little cafe I've walked by several times and had been wanting to try. It was a great little place with British accents, from the restroom being labeled "Water Closet" to the waitress' accent. By this point in the day the cloudy skies have finally let the sunshine through and as it warmed up we walked down 5th Ave to Union Square and caught the train over to Brooklyn. I always love walking the Brooklyn Bridge so I was excited to share this experience with my friends on a nice, sunny day. We wrapped the day up with dinner at Le Bon Soup to rekindle old memories of our first trip here together, then back down to TSQ to get cheesecake at Roxys. Once we were officially in a sugar coma and our feet were to the point of exhaustion we headed back home, only to sleep, pack up, and put them in a cab bright and early Monday morning!

Mel, Meg, & Josie with the Manhattan
skyline in the background

old Raleigh friends in new fun places!