The City So Nice, They Named It Twice (the other name's Manhattan)* (pt4)

So Saturday night when we got to Erica's house, we stayed up chatting for a while and watching cat videos--I mean, what else did you think we would do? If we all didn't have to be up the morning, we could have easily just stayed up all night long talking and laughing and catching up. I am going to go back for another visit later this fall, and I look forward to all night gab sessions, catching up on life and the journeys that we are on. Sunday morning came, and we headed our separate ways, with Fuzzy and I hitting up a restaurant up the street. While there, Fuzzy checked his email and found out that our 1:30pm flight was canceled. We were excited about having an early flight so that we could have some downtime at home before starting the new workweek. Instead, we were booked on an 8:30pm flight. Not to fear! We were in NY!

First we called our friend Alex who lives in Brooklyn to see if he was home. No answer. Then we google mapped an art store that Erica had told us about and walked a while to find it. No luck. My feet were covered in blisters (I still have them--I think each toe has 2-3 blisters on it) and we had only gotten a few hours of sleep, so we were slow moving and exhausted. But while in Brooklyn, we saw some amazing graffiti.

We decided to just head back to the city. Once there, we didn't really have an agenda--we could go to MOMA, but museums are exhausting enough as it is. We could go shopping, but we were running out of funds. And on top of that, it started to pour down rain. We stumbled upon a chocolate shop, Max Brenner's, but were scared of eating anything that would make us bloopy in the tums, so we bought a small box of chocolates. Then we browsed Forbidden Planet and Strand Books, and hopped into a little French cafe for some lunch. We thought about seeing a movie, but were so tired and cranky that we just decided to go to the airport a few hours early. Since we were flying Jetblue, we got to watch TV on the plane, and on the way in, they showed a snippet from an episode of The Next Food Network Star in which they had to cook for the schmancy restaurants that are in the Jetblue terminal at JFK airport. So we figured--let's see what this is all about! We went to the Mexican one, Revolucion--I had wine and Fuzzy had beer, he had the fish tacos and I had the crabcake pita. It was delicious! The wine, the food, everything. We just relaxed and took our time with the meal, and when we were done, I bought some magazines and we settled in at our gate for a few more hours.

Of course our flight was delayed.

We didn't take off until about 9:30, and when we got on the plane, there was cold water dripping on us. We were in the last row of the plane, and when the people in front of us complained, the flight attendant's response was "yeah, the last two rows in these planes do that." Jeez. So we decided to buy the pillow and blanket that they advertised being for sale (we had even passed up the pillow blanket combo for sale in the termincal cause we could just buy one on the plane). "I'm sorry, we aren't selling those anymore." O-k. So they stuffed some napkins in the cracks above me and turned the air down so we wouldn't freeze. Some horrible turbulance that made me feel like we were about to die later, and we were just ready to be back in Chicago. Flipping through the tv channels on the plane, I flipped to Food Network's The Best Thing I Ever Ate, which was showing the pizza episode. All the food porn was killing me, and then Aaron Sanchez started talking about the chocolate pizza at...you guessed it--Max Brenner!! I could have cried I had so much remorse for not getting a slice. I saw it, and it looked amazing, but nooooo, I had to pass. But don't worry, chocolate pizza. You will be mine. Oh yes. You will be mine.

So there you have it! It was an amazing anniversary getaway that felt like a week crammed into 3 days. Traveling with Fuzzy is my favorite thing to do in the whole world, and I can't wait for more travels in the future!

Fuzzy, how do you feel about that NY trip?

Erica? How about you?

* Michael Scott from The Office