Planes, Trains, and Running Shoes

This weekend, Andrea asked me when the last time that I really went out and had fun in New York was.

My answer? February.

You can thank my thesis for that.

But that all changed this weekend when Andrea and one of her friends from her home town of Milwaukee (apparently pronounced Mwaukee) came to New York and crashed with me for the weekend.

It was Andrea's first time and Ange's first since she was 12 or something, so we needed to do things the right way.

They came in on Friday night and wandered around Union Square until I got off work after which, we went to The Heartland Brewery and each ordered samplers of beer.


From there, we made our way to City Hall Park and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge so that we could eat pizza at Grimaldi's. God, I love Grimaldi's pizza.

Best pizza in New York...hands down.

We took the subway back into Manhattan and came back to my apartment to watch a movie and call it a night. I introduced them to "Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging," Nickelodeon's make of one of my favorite YA book series, The Confessions of Georgia Nicholson...which is essentially a British version of Mean Girls and The Princess Diaries.

Saturday morning, we were up bright and early to head to Central Park for a run...only it was cold, gloomy and rainy out so we bailed and made our way up town to get waffles from my favorite waffle truck, and walk down 5th Avenue to see Tiffany's and 30 Rock.

Soooooo good

We made our way into Times Square and then hopped on the 7 train to CitiField for the Mets game! Andrea got us awesome seats and the METS WON! It was a great game which was a refreshing change from the last Mets game I went to which lasted 4 hours during which absolutely nothing exciting or interesting happened.

CitiField!!!

Since the game was at 4:00, we still had the whole night ahead of us, so we made our way to a bar in the East Village to grab some beers. My friend Mike met up with us and we headed to McSorley's, New York's oldest Irish pub, which has played host to Abraham Lincoln and John Lennon. We had a round of drinks there, headed to a few other places and ended the night at Pommes Frites, where we had a very heated discussion about whether pomme is French for apple or not. I don't think we ever clarified that...

This morning, we were up bright and early to get in our Central Park run. It was one of Ange's "must do" things, so I took them for a tour of Central Park. We started at Engineer's Gate, popped onto the Reservoir and jumped out on the West Side before heading south, looping the bottom of the park and then ducking into the Mall, running down to Navy Terrace, back out the Mall and up Cat Hill to finish back where we started.

The Mall at Central Park

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. Now, I'm watching Miss Congeniality and trying to decide what to do with myself on my first Sunday in about 6 months with no school work to do because hey...guess what? I finished my Master's degree and I won't have school work to do again for a long, long time.

And that, my friends, is awesome.