We finally took our trip to New York City to see Mark’s Dad and some old college friends. It’s been over 3 years since our last trip, so the visit was long overdue.
We flew in Friday morning on a waaay too early flight (courtesy of Mark), and took a cab into a snow covered New York. Michael had been organizing a cocktail party for that evening so we just hung out and did a quick trip out to buy supplies.
The party was a great opportunity to get together all the people we hadn’t seen in years in one place and it went fabulously. More evidence that hiring a bartender is the best money you can spend at a party. There were some of the usual suspects who we last saw at our wedding (see Martha Olbrys, Julie’s Mum pictured with Mandy). In addition some of Mark’s friends from Stanford came along (Harad, Kulman and Heysse), Greg D who was in NY for work, and even Reid MacLean, whom Mark went to school with in the first grade! After the party we all went out way too late to dinner at Docks and didn’t get done until midnight… much later than we usually eat!
Saturday we woke up feeling a little the worse for wear and had a lovely relaxing morning with croissants and tea and then got ready to go to see Edith (Mark’s nanny from long ago) who lives across town. Edith fed us some of her wonderful fried rice and we were serenaded by Justin, her 5 year old grandson who is quite the musician!
After catching up with Edith, the three M’s (Michael, Mark and Mandy) went downtown to see Rockefeller Center and visit Kate’s Paperie to look for some unlined journals – which turn out to be frustratingly hard to find! Rockefeller Center was an unbelievable crush of people, it took at least 10 minutes to walk three blocks down 5th Avenue to get there from where we left our taxi marooned in traffic! The tree was fantastic and we got a lovely photo of it that appears in our Christmas newsletter that is in the mail (no, honestly, it is).
Once we got home we had little time to relax and get ready to go out on the town. For weeks before the trip we had been discussing what to do for Saturday night with Guy, Todd and Matt. But with a week before we were to arrive, Todd heroically bit the bullet and booked us at Pepolinos, a lovely little (though recently expanded) italian trattoria in Tribeca.
We started our evening by touring Guy and Todd’s lovely apartment on the upper west side (not too far from 500 West End Avenue). And we got to meet Lauren, Todd’s long-time squeeze who we both agreed was a fantastic person (Todd traded up!) From there we went down to the Brandy Library, which was very civilized where we had a few martinis/gimlets/sidecars etc. before braving the cold for a 3 block walk to the restaurant. As I said, the restaurant was top notch and seemed quite inexpensive for a well-regarded New York eatery. We met Matt Harad there.
After dinner, we found our way to the east village where we took over a booth at the Hi-Fi bar and spent the evening playing Galaga and drinking more than we needed to. We had a guest appearance from Subbudh (Guy’s freshman roommate) for the evening which was a wonderfully random element. Greg D even caught up with us at the bar for a fabulous evening. Of course, the next morning I was cursing the 4am bar closing time, but at the time, I would have wanted to be anywhere else.
Sunday morning rolled around somewhat cruelly, but Michael kindly volunteered to go wait for a table at GoodEnoughToEat a few blocks away, which was just what the doctor ordered. We spent the rest of the day taking it easy in the apartment. Mark set up the Airport Express and new multifunction printer and put some things up for free/sale on craigslist to start chipping away at some of the excess equipment currently filling up 500 WEA. We had dinner with Brooke and Norman and then went to be early as we had yet another stomach-churningly early flight (6am this time – Mark, will you never learn?).
We can’t say we got much rest, but we did hit the city right and promised it wouldn’t be another three years before we returned!