New York.

My week in New York (sorry, super LONG post)...

Day One:
I had a 6:40 AM flight out of Humphrey on 6/30. I didn't want to wake Adam up super early to drive me to the airport, so I hopped a bus... at 4:20 AM. I had a flight to Milwaukee, a 3 hour lay over, and then my flight to LaGuardia. We were about 1/2 way through the flight to NY when the captain said that there was a hold up at the airport and we would be circling for awhile. He attempted to reassure us by telling us that we had "extra fuel" so it would be fine if we didn't land for awhile. After about an hour, the captain announced that no one was being allowed to land in the New York area because of weather, and we were landing in Pittsburgh. I called Sam, my sister's boyfriend who was picking me up for LGA...

"Hey Heather, I just got to LGA"
"Hey Sam, I just landed... in Pittsburgh"

I was supposed to land at LGA at 2:30, at 3:00 pm, I had landed in Pittsburgh for re-fueling and to wait for the NY airports to allow planes to land again. Thankfully the woman sitting next to me was also traveling solo, so I had someone to pass the time with. We finally landed in NY at 7:30.

Heidi, Sam and I went out to dinner in Chinatown at the "Vegetarian Dim Sum House" and then took the Staten Island Ferry.



Day Two:
Heidi tried to give me a crash course on my Brooklyn surroundings, but they didn't really sink in. I did manage to get myself to Bryant Park to met Heidi when she got done with work. Went to the MoMA to see the permanent collection. I pretty much got a personal tour from my sister because of her art history knowledge. This was also the day that I decided I needed to get proper walking shoes- so I replaced my worn out vans with a new pair (Adam had the same idea and got me the exact same shoes for my birthday...). Heidi and I celebrated our birthday a night early with some cupcakes/cake. I went to Magnolia bakery, Heidi went to some health food store for something sugar free. We had some amazing Falafel at Tiam in the West Village.





Day Three- My Birthday:
Perhaps one of the most not fun birthday's ever. It's a tough call- I don't have amazing birthdays. Generally almost everyone I know is out of town at a cabin, so there usually isn't anyone around to celebrate with me. And of course, there is generally that whole sharing a birthday that usually leads to me doing something that I don't want to do because my sister wants to do something... You know how sharing goes. My sister was moving out of her apartment and moving day fell on our birthday... so I offered to help. We moved from 8-noon, then Heidi and I went to the spa. The spa was our original birthday plan, but of course got a little de-railed because of the moving. Of course we weren't finished moving before the spa excursion, so we had to finish after and moved again from 7-10:30 pm. Heidi had her heart set on having a nice relaxing dinner and drinks with a couple of close friends at Red Bamboo. To our amazing luck, the restaurant closed at 11, and we realized it at 11:15. We soon discovered that all the restaurants within close vicinity closed at midnight, therefore leaving us with limited options for our birthday dinner. I toasted Heidi at midnight (when we finally got drinks) and told her that it was July 3rd and the day had no where to go but up. I was wrong.

Day Four:
While doing some NY research, I saw that Governor's Island was open, a former military base in between Brooklyn and Manhattan. There is a free ferry to the island, but its only open Friday-Sunday. Heidi and I planned to go for a bike ride that day, so I thought we should hit up Governor's Island as well. After all, Friday is bike day on the Island. We rode across the Brooklyn Bridge and through downtown to get to the ferry place. We were a little unclear where to catch the Ferry and of course ended up at the wrong slip. To our amazing fortune, Heidi also got a flat tire. So, there we were, several blocks from where we wanted to be with two bikes, and one flat tire, but no tools to fix it. We walked our bikes to a bike shop to get it fixed. At this point, it is worth noting that Heidi forgot her wallet, and I was now funding out biking adventure.


We finally got on the road and biked through Battery park and the West Side Highway. It is an amazing bike path that goes along the Hudson River. We rode up to 125th Street...
Us resting at the end of our trek.


My friend Anna was singing that night, so we biked over to her show. After, Heidi and I went to this Japanese restaurant where you get to make your own cotton candy at the end.
Heidi making our cotton candy.


As we walked back to our bikes, we noticed something wrong. Majorly wrong. We were down to one bike. Heidi's new Surly bike was gone. Her old bike, that I was riding, was just resting against the bike rack no longer attached to the pole. One bike without a seat was gone (Heidi took her seat with her) and the other bike untouched. We threw our one remaining bike in the back of a cab and heading back to Brooklyn. Not only had we still not recovered from an awful birthday, we then had to deal with scrapping all of our plans for the rest of the weekend that sadly involved two bikes. Of course, Heidi was distraught over her bike, I was concerned about my vacation. We did end the night eating vegan ice cream and having a Michael Jackson dance party.

Day Five:
4th of July! We went to Queens to the PS1 gallery for their summer Saturday concert series "warm up". Went on a walk through Central Park and ultimately made our way to the West Side Highway to watch the fireworks. Everyone else had the same idea...



We walked through Times Square on our way back to the train. The look on Heidi's face is priceless...


Day Six:
It was Sunday and my last and final day to go to Governor's Island. The silly island had been plaguing me for 2 days and I was going to get there! I first met my friend Anna, in DUMBO (Down underneath the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), for the Brooklyn flea market...


Anna agreed to accompany me to the elusive Governor's Island. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and Anna was nice enough to play photographer...




We finally got to the island and after waiting for 3 days to get there, it wasn't that exciting. They did have some interesting art exhibits around the island that made it worth while. But, it was free, so there wasn't any need to complain. We followed up the ferry ride to Governor's Island with another ferry ride to Staten Island.


I ended the night with a wonderful dinner at Red Bamboo, an all vegetarian restaurant in Brooklyn (where we were trying to go on our birthday). This was well worth the wait. Heidi had taken a couple days off while I was in town, but she had to go back to work on Monday. Monday was my last full day there and I was aiming to hit up a few museums that I hadn't got to yet. Heidi casually mentioned that it was Monday and her gallery wasn't open the next day because it was Monday. That immediately made me worry that museum's weren't going to be open either. Shocker- almost all of them are closed!

Day Seven:
The only museum that was open was the American Museum of Natural History, so I went there. I also realized that lots of stuffed animals creep me out, so I spent most of my time in the planetarium section. I got another Magnolia cupcake, because they are amazing, hit up Grand Central Station and went in search of some New York Pizza. I went to Ray's pizza in SoHo. Ray's is supposed to be one of the first pizzerias in NY, but there are A LOT of pizza places named Ray, so it's hard to be sure which one is the first one, but this one had good reviews so I went there. It was cheap and tasty. I met up with my friend Sarah to walk the "highline" a new park that was built on an above ground train tracks. After that, I headed out to Bryant Park for their movies in the park night. They were playing "Dog Day Afternoon" which was set in Brooklyn.

Day Eight:
My last day. The first part of my trip I was cat sitting for some friend's of my sister, but they came home Sunday evening, so my last two nights were spent staying with my sister and Sam. The hot water in their new apartment wasn't working, so my number one priority on Tuesday morning was to get shower, preferably one that wasn't ice cold. Thankfully, their hot water had just gotten fixed that morning. I ended my NY trip with a walk to prospect park and a slice of Brooklyn Pizza.




Despite all the mishaps I did have a good trip. But I'm glad to be home. However, now that I'm back, all I have to do it sit back and think about my employment search...