NYC

I spent the weekend in New York City with my old childhood friend, Malia. She's lived 2 hours away from me for 3 years, and this was the first time we've visited. Pathetic.

But I hopped on the train and met up on Friday night. We did a whirlwind, cheap tour of Manhattan, seeing Columbia (where Malia got her master's degree), Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, the Empire State Building (lit up green for St Patrick's Day), Central Park, the Met (saw some Van Goghs, Manets, Monets, Rembrandts, etc), Chinatown, Little Italy. We also took the ferry to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan from the water.

Somehow, our focus ended up being on food: we got the best hot dogs in the world at Grey's Papaya, some New York cheesecake, some New York pizza, Italian pastries, cream puffs, frozen hot chocolate (made famous by Serendipity, the restaurant in the movie of the same name). We also saw Tom's Restaurant, the one in Seinfeld, but didn't manage to squeeze in their milkshakes.

I'll post some pictures later.

Juma and Justin saw me off at the train station. On their way home, Juma was sad and said, "I want two grown-ups at home!" But I brought him back a NY fire department toy truck, so he thinks it was worth it to miss me for a day.