Hello! I started writing this a weekend ago…at the end of my trip to New York. I was writing on the plane and ran out of time, but I wanted to document, so please enjoy the below as if I’m still on a plane…
I mean, WOW, what a weekend! I’m going to highlight the trip in bullets:
Landed Thursday afternoon and took Via from LGA to my hotel in midtown. Via is a group rideshare, so I expected to have others join along the way, but nope. It was just me and the driver...the driver who SUCKED. He kept “missing” his exits on the way into Manhattan, and I called him on it. He laughed, apologized and tried to play it off but I was having none of it. Finally made it and the ride only cost $22. It was worth it on the way in because I felt like I had the time, but I definitely didn’t want to do it on the way out of the city.
Met Old Work Friend at my hotel on Thursday evening. Plan was to go on the rooftop of the hotel where I was staying for pre-dinner cocktails, but even at 7pm, there was a line to get up. Luckily, hotel guests get priority and we were escorted to the front of the line, but when we got up there it was HOT and so crowded we couldn’t even turn around. Super annoying. They tout that this is the largest rooftop bar in NYC, but I don’t believe it. I feel like I’ve been on many that were bigger. Decided to head out to dinner a little early.
Dinner at Estela was phenomenal and it was great to catch up with Old Work Friend. It was as if no time had passed, and I’ll be honest, it felt like a work dinner, which bummed me out a tiny bit because I didn’t really want to talk business, but that’s what she and I have in common. I was also a little bummed that I was *exhausted* by the time dinner was over (around 10:30) and I didn’t feel like cocktailing or carousing after dinner - nor did Old Work Friend, which was fine. Back to the hotel to crash. Absolutely needed the sleep since I’d been up since 4am.
Up early Friday morning and it was a gorrrrgeous day! I decided to walk around the Flatiron District for no particular reason except that it was an old stomping ground for me. I found an awesome little cafe and tea place that is all about Matcha, fittingly called Cha Cha Matcha and got a matcha tea and then walked over to Union Square where the greenmarket is. As I walked, I thought a lot about Jim, a younger guy I used to fling with when I was in my 30s who lives in a building right next to Union Square. I wondered what was up with him but didn’t text him or otherwise try to contact him.
Walked over to the Barnes & Noble because...well, who gets to to go to a B&N anymore? I suppose my walk was more nostalgic than anything. I also had to pee so I went upstairs and used their facilities. As I was washing my hands afterwards, I found a ring on the basin. Clearly someone had been washing their hands and accidentally left their wedding/engagement ring on the counter. On closer inspection, it wasn’t just a simple ring, it was a ROCK! I’m guessing at least 3 carats in the center stone and diamonds all the way around the band. I picked it up and went downstairs to find the store manager. I didn’t want to give it to just anybody who worked there. Took me quite a while and nobody seemed to want to help me. I didn’t tell anyone why I was looking for the manager. Finally, I found a trustworthy looking woman working and showed her my discovery and she led me over to the...I guess the guy in charge, though she said he wasn’t the manager. The man thanked me and said he’d put it in the safe, and I sure hope whoever lost their ring got it back because, MAN that ring was a stunner!! Can you imagine?
Walked some more until it was time to hop on the subway to meet [Charmingly Neurotic] at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. Timing was great and met [CN] at noon, pretty much on the dot. The museum simply THRILLED me. And there were many, many interactive parts of the exhibit. So many that [CN] and I had to take a break for lunch so that we could come back and finish the exhibit. I was so blown away by all of the sights, sounds, and SMELLS in the museum. At one point, one of the guys working for the museum decided to give us a lesson on the museum building (after I kind of flirted with him and he started asking me all kinds of questions about whether or not I work out a lot and stuff - ha!), which is actually the Carnegie Mansion, and I was blown away by the little-known inside stories that he told us (like the secret passageways from Andrew Carnegie’s bedroom to the downstairs area). It was the perfect inspiration and fun to get some inside scoop!
Lunch with [CN] was great - we chatted about our dogs and our love lives and our pasts and then back to the museum to finish what we started. And then [CN] had to go pick up Biggie at doggy daycare, but she pointed me in the direction of the reservoir in Central Park that we’d planned to walk together and she told me that since I was so close that I should go to the fashion exhibit at the Met...which was a perfect idea!
I did just that - I walked around the reservoir and then down to The Met and did the exhibit (STUNNING fashions, BTW. Check it out here). Took me quite a while, and by the time I walked through and saw as much fashion as I could in that location - yes, the exhibit was in multiple locations, continuing at the Cloisters - I needed to stop and rest. [CN] had suggested I go to the rooftop of the museum as the views are incredible (and they *were* spectacular!). Grabbed a glass of champers, of course and soaked in the view from the top. Sort of mingled around, but it got a little hot and crowded and I got a little hungry.
Was heading down to the closest subway station when I thought to myself that it’s such a glorious day that I’d walk down 5th Avenue for a while until I either found a place where I wanted to pop in for some shopping or even some eating.
Walked and walked and walked and walked. Before I knew it, I had actually walked from 86th all the way down to 34th and decided to just keep going all the way down to 24th to this dumpling place that [Elaine Benes] had posted about a few days earlier to get some simple dumplings for dinner. The place was *tiny* and packed full of people, so I ended up ordering to go, not really sure where I’d eat...didn’t really want to go back to my hotel room to eat - plus it was several blocks away, so I ended up in Madison Square Park, sitting on a park bench, eating my dumplings with the sun setting over the Empire State Building, and it was simply wonderful! It was an incredibly beautiful evening and I had so much fun people watching and listening in on the conversation of the older father and adult son sitting on the next bench over while it got completely dark outside.
It was around this time when I got a text from Jim, the guy I’d referenced earlier that I was walking through his hood!! Seems he’d spotted my photos on social media and said, “Hey there, I see someone is in town! [winky face]”. Yeah. I gotta be honest - I thought about it for a minute - like...well, I could hang out with Jim and get super drunk and probably end up in his apartment (and bed) just like the old days (actually, I did just that the last time I was in New York, which was really only a year and a half ago), or I could go back to my hotel room and get a really good night’s sleep because I’m doing a big workout in the morning and I should save my blowing it out for Saturday night (the big birthday party). Believe it or not, I ended up doing the latter. I went back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep. In full transparency, I talked myself out of going to hang out with Jim by reminding myself that he has a *really* POINTY tongue that he uses to kind of stab my mouth when we kiss. That settled that.
Back at hotel but feeling FOMO, so I primped myself a little bit and headed downstairs to the bar to see if there was any Friday night action. Not really, though I did end up talking with a very nice young couple from Los Angeles who invited me to go to some club with them later in the evening! Very funny, but actually kind of nice of them to ask. I declined, which I’m sure they wanted me to, and after a nightcap went to bed. Tomorrow would be another BIG day!
Woke early and kind of wanted to go to Milk Bar to get a Cereal Milk soft serve. That would be my breakfast. Doesn’t it sound wonderful - it’s supposed to taste like the milk at the bottom of a bowl of corn flakes. Maybe gross to some, but it sounded just perfect as a simple breakfast before my workout. Walked the several blocks to the Chelsea location to get there when they opened - and I got there right as they were opening. However, it appeared that not all the staff had come into work and the “machine was not working yet” so what else did I want? UGH. Nothing. You know how it is when you have your tastebuds set for something and a cookie or whatever just wasn’t going to do! I left, brokenhearted.
Barry’s Bootcamp Workout was the next thing slated for my day. I got to the studio a little early to make sure it was the same kind of set-up as the one in [mycity], and it was. However, once inside and working out, I’d say that the clientele are about 10x more hardcore than the folks I normally work out with. O. M. G. I was blown away by the intensity of these folks. I had reserved a treadmill at the end of the studio - kind of like getting a window seat on an airplane - I knew that I would be running next to one person only and not have someone else on the other side. Thing is, the woman next to me HAD to be an olympic athlete or something! She was *beyond* fit!! Her jog was like my hardest sprint level on tread, and the weights she used on the floor part of the workout were like big, buff dude level! I know that you’re not supposed to compare, but WOW, this woman blew me away! Still, I got a great workout in and was very happy that I’d signed up to do this.
After I nearly killed myself at Barry’s, I went to meet an old friend’s sister who just happened to be in NYC on a vacation and college visit with her family. This is not someone I’d normally go out of my way to visit, but she was so close that I felt like I should just go say hi, and I’m glad I did. We have zero in common - she’s got a huge blended family and was there to do stuff that was the opposite of my idea of a good time, but it was still really wonderful to see someone I hadn’t seen in 20 years...or actually, 22 years! She and her family were staying in Times Square, and my hotel was actually close by, so I met her in the heart of the crowd and we had a 30-or so minute conversation in the blazing sunshine (good thing I was already sweaty and in workout garb), and then that was it!
I can’t remember what I did after that. I think I grabbed a bite and took a power nap! Then showered to get ready for B-Day Girl’s party.
B-Day Girl and I met for a drink before walking together to her party, which was at a bar down the block. I wore my vintage lace overlay dress and it was just as spectacular as it is on the dress form in my living room! B-Day Girl looked amazing!! She’d had her hair, nails, makeup done and even though I hadn’t seen her in many, many years, we picked right back up!
B-Day party was honestly so much fun! Not that I didn’t expect it to be, but I didn’t know *what* to expect! It had been years and I was the only friend of B-Day Girl’s to show up from “our era”, which was about three jobs back for both of us. She’d rented out a VIP section of her work *local*, which is a fairly simple bar that has a fantastic DJ and cheap (for NY) drinks! She had passed hors d'oeuvres and a glorious cake and SO MANY FASHION PEOPLE showed up! Had a phenomenal time with them...and then...these two young guys from outside the party started hitting on me (because I’d gone outside the VIP section to a part of the bar where I could get a quick champagne, naturally). These dudes were thisclose to being cute - buying me drinks and chatting me up and all was great until they sort of started doing something similar to THIS...and I just had to get the hell away from them as quickly as I could. At one point, one of them actually found his way back into the VIP area and found me and sat down next to me, but I told him to leave. Weird. Rest of the night was great! We actually had a sort of afterparty in B-Day Girl’s suite and then went to the crowded rooftop (that stays open until 4am) and I lasted until about 2am. All-in-all, not bad for this 50-something!
Woke up fairly early Sunday morning considering I’d had a late-ish night. Slightly hungover, but not too terribly, and I had scheduled yet another workout session even earlier on this day (because I knew I had to check out by noon). Oh lort. It was hard. And hot and sweaty. And there were like 50 nearly-naked dudes literally dripping wet with sweat. That’s about all I can remember from this class
I thought I wanted to get a lot more walking in as there was still a ton of NYC I hadn’t been able to get in - like the Highline. But I got a text from B-Day Girl asking me if I still wanted to have brunch with her. Clearly I’d forgotten that we’d discussed having brunch the night before, even though I assumed that brunch was going to be a part of this whole weekend. I agreed to have brunch thinking that I’d actually have time to get some walking in afterwards since my flight wasn’t until 6ish.
Brunch turned into a rest-of-the-day affair, and I’m so glad it did! It was just me and the B-Day Girl and we went to the rooftop bar and had the absolute best Sunday Funday ever!
Lots of food, booze and laughter. Oh and the people watching! It was Father’s Day so it was fun to see the kids bringing Dad out to brunch. Many dads getting their drank on! We laughed and laughed. And B-Day Girl said I was the best part of her birthday. How incredibly sweet was that! I’m so glad we extended the hours of our brunch up until I had to leave for the airport!
Of course, no trip of mine would be complete without at least SOME story about dudes, right? So by the time we’d been good and lubed up with the hair of the dog, these incredibly HOT, super buff guys walked in and went to the bar (we were sitting across from the bar in this cool banquette), and we kept staring at them wondering what their story was and also wondering how we could get their attention. I was just tipsy and ballsy enough to say, let’s just GO to the bar! So we did! Long, long story short, by the time I left for the airport, I’d exchanged IG accounts with one of the dudes...and before I even got to the airport, he’d sent me a DICK pic. This, after I expressly told him NOT to send me a dick pic!!! I suppose he just thought what the hell because he was probably never going to see me again OR he took it as a challenge, but whatever. A dick pic is a dick pic regardless (even if it was a lovely and impressive specimen).
And that, my friends, was how the trip ended! I had a very non-eventful flight home - started writing this entry, duh!) and got home in time to put myself to bed to try to have a little recovery before coming in to work on Monday.
But all of that was a LOT! All-in-all, a fantastic, fabulous weekend!!
(Whew - glad to have this written down!)
xox,
GS
Loading comments...