The Sister's Food Tour Part 1

I know I titled this "Sisters", plural, and yes, biologically I only have 1 sister named Emily and she is AMAZING, but we also "adopted" Jenelle a few years ago and she's been a nice addition to our family :) I was very excited to have a Sister Adventure Wkd and it was really nice that they'd both been to NYC before so we could deviate from the normal touristy guidelines. Basically we ate, A LOT, and it was so good.

best $3 spent on dinner.

Em arrived Thursday afternoon just in time to freshen up, grab some dumplings and sesame pancakes from my new fave Prosperity Dumpling, then walk up to St.Marks and meander, get some Pinkberry, then finally make our way to the Ben Rector/Needtobreathe concert. Let me just say, this was a great concert and it was pretty rockin' for "Christian music". We met some really sweet college students who shared our strong dislike for the group of drunk girls beside us (hello, rule #17, you don't get drunk at Christian concerts!) that continually pushed against us and told us to "stop taking their space" and who loudly talked to each other throughout every single song of Ben Rector. Me, being the older and more confrontational sister that I am took it upon myself to make some small talk with them. Our conversation went a little like this,

Ben Rector

    "Hey, seems like you girls have a lot to talk about! I saw you all hand your phones out. Do you have unlimited texting? You do, oh that's great, because I'd really appreciate if you could just text each other what you're thinking instead of saying it loud enough for all of us to hear! I paid to hear the band, not you".
    Their response, "You want us to text and drink at the same time?!".
    Me again, "Yeah, I do. I'm pretty sure you've done that before."

Did it work? Not really but I felt so much better after I said that! Turns out they were "fans" of Needtobreathe so instead of talking they loudly sang most of the songs. Oh well, we still had a good time and I'd hands down recommend going to see both bands if you have the chance!

Needtobreathe

Em and I headed home, and by this time Jenelle had arrived at my apt. Our first official stop of our "Food Tour" was Insomnia Cookies and they have this Coconut Pecan cookie that is to die for! We ordered a few boxes (don't judge, it's way too early in the story for that) to go and made some special deliveries to both the PICU and "Cardiac for Babies" unit so they could meet some of my coworkers and the mother of a patient who I just love (that is a whole different blog post). And then we got hungry on the 10 minute walk home so we grabbed some 99cent pizza!

The next day started out with a stop at Vic's Bagel Bar (are you surprised?) and Jenelle about died from how good it was! We needed that energy for our busy day of traipsing all over Brooklyn, per Emma's request. First we walked down to the LES for a mani-pedi at my favorite, Beauty Cutie, and then we took the subway over to Brooklyn, where we scored some cheap fedoras from a sidewalk vendor, and skipped a traditional lunch for some red velvet ice cream at Shake Shack instead! Our sugar comas led us to a really fun kitchen store, where we bought some amazing veggie peelers & Brooklyn tea towels and we found a cookbook there that left us drooling and decided our next foodie adventure! One Girl
Cookies was such a charming place, it smelled like heaven, and tasted just as good!

One Girl Cookies

cute sister

We decided that we should probably walk off some calories and headed to Brooklyn Bridge Park. While exploring the park, the carousel, and shops (like Brooklyn Industries, love their soft T's) we found Jacques Torres, a chocolatier, who's rumored to make the best chocolate chip cookies so of course we had to try them! By now it's 6pm and we haven't eaten "substantial" food so we got in line for pizza at Grimaldis. After carb-loading on a NY staple we walked the Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan and took some AMAZING photos! 

Brooklyn Bridge Park

pretty skyline

probably the most fabulous
picture taken of me, ever

stunning sister

snazzy Jenelle

city lights from the BB

Downtown lights

Somehow, we mustered up some more energy and headed down to Southport to catch the Staten Island Ferry. We decided to brave the cold wind, which we were not dressed for, and as we stood huddled together with my scarf wrapped around all our heads we waived to Lady Liberty and fireworks shot off in the distance. At that moment we all knew, our day together couldn't have been better!

approaching Manhattan on the ferry