Yesterday I left home around 9AM to head over to New Jersey to meet up with my friend Mike who I was traveling up to New York City with. Plans to head up there came together when I learned my friend Wilmer of the Bitlbee project was going to be up there. Then learned via twitter that Nikkiana would also be in town! Mike was headed up for different reasons anyway so going together seemed to make sense.
The work Mike was doing in the city required use of his car, so for the only the second time in my life I got to ride a car into NYC (the last time was with my grand parents, YEARS ago, even they normally took the train). This was the first time I’d ever been through the Lincoln Tunnel, and was delighted to learn that I still had cellphone reception there, so I twittered from under a river! We parked on 7th Ave, touched base with our respective friends and then headed to Burgers & Cupcakes for lunch. On the way down 7th we saw this smashed car, yikes!
Burgers & Cupcakes was awesome. We had planned on hitting a burger joint that Mike’s friend recommended, but then learned they don’t open until 4PM. By then burgers were on our mind so Friday night we were searching for burger places to eat at. What could be better than burgers and cupcakes?
I snagged a salmon burger, which while not your typical giant-american-burger was immensely satisfying. They had a burger and milkshake special so I couldn’t help but order a chocolate shake to go along with it. And dessert? A delicious carrot cupcake.
After lunch Mike left for his engagement I had some time to kill before meeting up with Nikki and Wilmer. I wandered around 7th Ave for a bit, then got bored and headed toward 6th. To my surprise a long stretch of 6th was shut down for vendors of all sorts, and made for a lot of fun to walk through.
I met up with Nikki around 2:30 and we continued the wandering. Having known her only online until then via Ubuntu stuff it was very cool to meet up and talk in person finally. We snagged some $1 lemonades and enjoyed wandering. Around 3:30 I found Wilmer finally (grin, we were supposed to meet at 2!) and he joined us. We headed toward the Empire State Building to see about going up to the top, but the wait was a bit long so we satisfied ourselves by taking pictures of it instead. It’s a very big building.
Unfortunately Mike’s plans changed unexpectedly and caused us to have to leave the city around 4:30PM – d’oh! I think next time I’ll see about parking my car at a train station in NJ and braving the trip up myself.
In spite of the shortened trip, I am very glad I went up and was able to see people for a little while. And New York City! I quite like Manhattan, going up is always a fun adventure. Plus, now that Nikki is up there I have at least two friends in the city who I’d be comfortable calling to meet up, fun!
Today the weather is beautiful yet again! And I’m going down to Philadelphia with Stephen to go to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. I just learned it existed a few weeks ago and have been trying to find a day to go. Then I think we’ll be hitting Chipotle for dinner, yum!
Wednesday, Jul 1st, 2009 at 10:09
Oh your post made me want to go back to NYC. :-) The pics and the talk of the food.. yum-o to say the least. Thanks for sharing…