In early September, Alicia and I flew to NYC for my friend Mike’s wedding. It was Alicia’s first trip to NYC (and my second). We caught a red-eye flight from LAX to Newark (through Cincinnati), and arrived to NYC Friday morning. Because we had flew into Newark, we had to take the train into the city from the Newark airport. So our first experience with NYC was emerging from Penn Station. We had to pick up the keys to the apt we were staying at in Brooklyn, which was a short walk to 5th Ave. Along the way, we walked through Koreatown. We had left one Koreatown for another (though NYC’s K-town is a much smaller deal than LA as its only one block).
After picking up the keys, we got some lunch and then headed to Brooklyn to drop off our stuff and get ready to head out for the wedding. We were able to walk over to Mike’s apt from where we were staying and then go with the larger group heading over to the wedding site. As for the wedding itself, it was probably one of the best weddings that I’ve attended. It was low-key, but not overtly. They had friends that had provided homebrewed beer as part of the beverages and it was catered by a pizza truck (I don’t remember if it was wood-fired…but it was definitely artisan pizza). Mike and Jessica had written their own vows (Mike’s referencing his obsessive fandom of the Oregon Ducks and other sports). A real good time. We did end up bowing out around 11pm (ET)…since we had very little sleep since the day before (and what sleep we had was airplane sleep).
Saturday, one of Alicia’s college friends came up to the city from Rutgers. We met up with her at Central Park and walked around there for a while and then I left to meet up with Mike at the NYC Duck’s bar to watch the football game (see the vows reference above). One cool thing that happened on Saturday, is that while Alicia and her friend were checking out the Highline Park, they ran into a La Newyorkina cart. We had just received her Paletas cookbook from the KCRW cookbook club a week or two before the trip. (Alicia and I went back the next day, because I wanted to try one as well). After the Duck game was over, I met back up with them and we ended up heading down to the tip of Manhattan. We walked by Ground Zero, where they were going to have the big grand opening of the 9/11 Memorial the next day, and then walked down to see if we could catch the Staten Island Ferry. When we got to the terminal, we had just missed a ferry and didn’t feel like waiting for the next one. Because it was the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 the next day, they had set up white flags for the persons killed in the attacks in Battery Park. Each flag had each persons name on it. It was a pretty impressive display (it takes a lot of park space to put up that many flags).
It was a quick trip (we had to head back Sunday), but we both had fun. Alicia wants to move there (I think its a nice place to visit…but I wouldn’t want to live there).
