New York

We're in Irvington, NY, about to sit down to eat a pile of quiche and waffles with Matthew, Tommye, Mom, Dad, Aunt Cindy and Uncle Des. We're close to wrapping up our recovery time in New York and heading back out on the road, but boy has it been a lovely few days -- particularly after the loooong travel back from New Zealand.

We knew it was going to be bad, but 33 hours of traveling on five flights to get to NYC from Christchurch was . . . much like sitting on a plane or in an airport for 33 hours. Next time you're thinking that your cross-country flight is nasty, think about this saga:

1. Christchurch --> Melbourne. We have to collect our bags in the Melbourne airport and clear Australian customs. We are carrying, by the way, a case of wine. 
2. Melbourne --> Sydney. We have to collect our bags and switch terminals, which also involves me sweet-talking a Virgin Blue employee into giving us vouchers for the cross-terminal train, because we have no Australian cash and Sydney Airport is intent on robbing its patrons by charging them AUS $5 for a six-minute ride on the cross-terminal train.
3. Sydney --> LAX. We have to collect our bags in LAX and clear American customs. We discover that one of the bottles of wine we are bringing home has shattered and spend a long time with plastic bags, large Fragile stickers, a tannin-soaked cardboard box, and an angry airport employee. In the process of reconstituting the case of wine, we miss our flight and have to wait an extra hour.
4. LAX --> Denver. We are starting to become punchy and strange. We say "Fra-gee-lay. Must be Italian" several times.
5. Denver --> LaGuardia. We collect our bags for the third time and put the sad case in a cab, hoping another bottle has not broken. It is midnight. 
6. Taxi from LaGuardia to my parents' house in Irvington. The cab driver cannot figure out how much to charge us for the ride up the Hudson river. We spend 20 minutes at the side of the road figuring this out. We are tired. I only have New Zealand dollars. The broken, plastic-swathed, wet wine case smells like a homeless person.

We cannot express how good it felt to get into bed after all of this. Thankfully, my parents are possibly the best and most relaxed parents in the world, and let us recover from jetlag and make no decisions at their house for two days. Mom also bought us yoga passes for a week. How good is she?

A stop in the NY area for more than a couple days cannot be all relaxation, however, so we managed to pull together an amazing day in Manhattan to see friends and family.

Woo, Manhattan!

Let me just say this: New York is awesome. It is the place you go to be the most yourself version of yourself. It is the place you go to figure out what we humans are as a species. Plus, a lot of our friends live there. We stupidly forgot to take the camera with us into NYC, so we have very few photos to show you of our trip, but I'll cobble some things together.

First, we went to go see the Big Bambú, an installation on the roof of the Met, with Justin's Aunt Carolyn.

The installation is being built a little more every day: more bamboo poles are being lashed together to form this structure, which you can also walk through if you get there early enough to get tickets, which we did not do. But it was pretty cool just to walk around, and extra awesome to see Aunt Carolyn.

Second, Aunt Carolyn took us to Nectar, the diner made famous by Kramer vs. Kramer, and we ate huge pastrami sandwiches. Inevitably, due to both the huge amount of meat on the sandwich and my deep reverence for Mitch Hedberg, I also asked for a loaf of bread and some other people. After lunch, the three of us walked around Manhattan to purchase Justin the perfect pea coat, stopped in a lot of little used/new bookstores, and had a glass of wine at the top of the Time Warner building. 

Third, after saying goodbye to Aunt Carolyn, we traveled down to Union Square to eat a delicious and fantastically cheap dinner with the delightful Annie Olinick (ANNIE COME HOME!) and afterwards walked over to Matthew and Tommye's place in Alphabet City.

Fourth, we traveled over to Williamsburg to hang out with a mob of friends from law school. Kim, Rebecca, Lorna, and especially Jaime, it was so good to see you all and travel round the Brooklyn bars until 3 a.m. I still want to go to that cupcake place that Jaime insists is like biting into an angel. And Jaime, I'm not going to stop thanking you for housing us and taking us to that perfect brunch place in the morning. We stopped by Artists and Fleas, a flea market of handmade goods by Brooklyn artists, and bought Matthew a magnet depicting an orca eating a businessman for closing his first deal.  And then we headed back into Manhattan to start the long journey down to New Jersey.

I call this composition "Statue of Liberty." The statue is somewhere behind the strut, I think.
Sue me, we were on the train, it was hard to take a photo with my phone, OK?

We were very pleased with our jam-packed 24 hours in New York City, even though it took us three hours to figure out how to leave it (another long, frustrating transportation story involving two cab rides, a subway trip, and a train from Penn Station). We all made it down to Princeton in time to have a nice, peaceful family dinner with my little brother Ben.

OK, he's not so little, and it wasn't so peaceful (my family generally registers eight on the Richter), but it was fabulous. My mom even got to eat paella without rice.

And Matthew made his famous photo face. Several times.

We even photographed the elusive Tommye in her natural environment! However, the picture came out blurry because we had to go so fast to catch her, so I cannot share it with you. Tommye, you're safe for now. However, I will show everyone this photo, because you're awesome: hey everyone, this is my brother's rad girlfriend.

We're headed out of town tomorrow, and will post more along the road. I'll just close by saying that we love my crazy family and we'll be back to New York soon, we promise.

XOX

Meredith and Justin