We are back from a big weekend on the east coast! We left Friday morning and drove to meet Dorian's friend, Robert, in or around Allentown, PA. Yes, it was in the middle of nowhere, rural Pennsylvania, but Robert was in Philly for the week, and it was the closest place to meet up for a quick bite. We met around 3:15 or so and ate at Friday's, which was way more expensive and not as good as I remember. No wonder we never go there. Anyway, Robert got us a baby gift - diapers haha! After the guys spent most of the hour catching up on sports stats, we got on the road again and headed for New Jersey.
We were only about 2 hours from Dorian's cousin Evan's condo in Jersey, and we arrived just after he got home from work. Evan is newly married to Meghan; their wedding was 2 weeks prior to ours, so it's been fun comparing notes with them - especially since we are both figuring how to combine Jewish and non-Jewish holidays. They honeymooned in Hawaii and it was fun to finally see all their pictures, which they have already made into an awesome album (I'd better get on that....)
Anyway, Dorian was dying to have some NY pizza, so Evan got some from a local place and it was devoured in about 5 minutes. Then we all played UNO until Meghan and I had to head to bed. I fell asleep trying to watch the OSU bball game, but I'm glad I didn't make it since they lost :( I won't even talk about how my bracket is doing now....
In the morning, Dorian and I were up by 9 and out the door by 10 to hit the city before meeting with his family. We found free parking on the street in Chinatown - Score! From there we had fun haggling down the prices of a few fun gifts for Dorian's grandma (it was just like Thailand!) and then found a great Asian place to eat for lunch. Since we were so close to Little Italy, we walked on over and also bought some delicious Italian desserts - cannolis for wombat's dad, and New York style cheesecake for my mom and Ron (for dog-sitting Jack).
By the time we were finished, we figured we had better get over to see Dorian's family since a 10 mile drive could take 2 hours, even on a Saturday. We met at Dorian's aunt's house in Long Island and chatted for a few hours before dinner, which was at a local Italian place. It was really fancy (compared to Ohio) and the 3 course dinner lasted at least 4 hours. There were about 13 of us, and the appetizers, pasta, and desserts were wonderful, including Junior's raspberry cheesecake, yum! After dinner, we took Dorian's dad with us to stay at Grandma Bea's house a short distance away, since the house was really full at Aunt Vicki's place. Although we had a little trouble getting the key from the elderly neighbor, and the heat hovered around 56 degrees, I was exhausted and had no trouble sleeping while Dorian stayed up chatting with his dad.
Sunday, we took Mark back to Vicki's and said our goodbye's, then hit the city again to visit MOMA. After 3 hours of walking and viewing the fun exhibits, I was starving, so we got a hot dog and pretzel from a street vendor and walked down to Central Park, where we watched some fun break dancers and drooled over really expensive candy in FAO Schwartz. We thought about leaving for Ohio then, but decided to catch up with old friends in town instead, so we went to Brooklyn and met up with our law school classmate, Luwick, and Dorian's old high school friend, Amy. Lu gave us a quick tour of Brooklyn, which was much nicer than the movies make it out to be! There were so many beautiful old homes and tree lined streets, alongside miles of boutiques and mom-and-pop stores. Then he took us to an actual Junior's restaurant for dessert, which was amazing. I tried to meet up with my sister-in-law, Margot, too, since she was in Chelsea for work for a week, but we had already left the downtown by the time she was off work, so it wasn't meant to be this time.
Finally, after one more night at grandma Bea's, we left at 4 AM so we could beat NYC rush hour (which we did!) and hopefully get back to Ohio by 1 and work a half-day at the office. However, that did not go as planned, since we hit a huge accident in PA that forced us to sit for about an hour before turning us around and making us find our own detour around route 80, THEN another accident on I-70 in which we sat 2.5 hours at a stand still while the entire accident was apparently cleaned up before letting traffic pass. We finally made it home around 4:30, whew!
No comments:
Post a Comment