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Italy 2011

Obviously, we're not really bloggers. This one serves as more as a travel journal for us to remember our trips and what we've done on them. I love going back through old posts and remembering our vacations. This last one to Italy was our longest trip yet, and definitely one of the best.

We arrived (delirious from the flight as per usual) in Rome on Aug 27th and promptly pick up our sweet ride. It's hard not to feel like a real jet setter when you're cruising around in your brand new Panda model, with the body of a roller skate. Either way, it got us to our destination - a tiny town on the Tuscany boarder called Paciano. After a quick nap we were eager to explore the town. Needless to say, the town consisted of two restaurants, two bars/tobacco shops, a butcher and a barber shop. It could not have been more spot-on. The café two doors from our apt served drinks and snacks, and have tables lining the street. It’s the perfect place for a glass of wine that costs less than $2. We later learned that this would be our other home away from home. That, and the small balcony off of the apartment that housed a table and chairs where we would have our drinks before heading to dinner. Our first night, we ate at a place called La Logetta, that happened to have the world’s most mind-blowing handmade pasta – thick homemade spaghetti with wild boar sauce and gnocchi with truffles (both local specialties). Along with three other courses, this was one of our top five meals of all time. And this is also where our journey to becoming fatties began.

The next day, we decided to take the Panda out for a spin and head to the wine town of Multicipiano. Somehow we were caught up in a Ren fest of sorts, and probably would have stayed if an oversized turkey leg presented itself. But this town was high on tourism, and we left for Pienza. This particular town is the home of pecorino cheese, and we planted ourselves at a small store where mother and older mother served us cheese and wine at an indoor picnic table. The next day followed with another gorgeous hillside down called Castiglione Del Lago - home of a beautiful lake (where we later went swimming) and calzones the size of your head. We'd gathered enough provisions in these places to make dinner at the apt, which contained a kitchen that most chefs would be jealous of.

On day four, we woke up early to take the train to Florence. Both of us are pretty wild about train travel, but we happened to land in the train car from hell that morning. Literally, the compartment was at least 110 degrees. Luckily, the trip to Florence was only an hour and a half, and we went straight to see the famous statue of David upon arrival. This work of art really was beyond impressive. We had a nice day travelling around the city, and stopping for lunch. On this evening or possibly another, we decided we'd live like the locals and stop at a bowling alley on the way back home. We were kicking ourselves for not placing bets. Sure the Italians know how to live (eat, drink, nap and smoke), but they're awful at bowling.

After our blue collar night at the bowling alley, we thought we class it up the next day and head to Cortona. Apparently this is the place where "Under the Tuscan Sun" was filmed, and Diane Lane is next to Mary in these parts. We had a fantastic lunch there, but left because we had a winery tour booked that afternoon.

On our last day in Paciano we decide to explore the town, which took all of 15 minutes, so we headed to a long lunch at our favorite restaurant. Seriously, this had been our life for one week. Sleep in, eat lunch, and explore a small village, read, nap, pre-dinner drinks, and late dinner. It’s not hard to get used to this life. We ended the night with more lardo pizza (hence the word lardo) and were lucky enough to catch a beer festival a few doors down. We played a few rounds of foosball, while the owner let us hold her guinea pig, which promptly pooped on Nate.

The next morning we cleared out our leftovers for breakfast, and feasted on bread gnocchi, pizza and pasta before heading to Naples for the day and finally, the Almalfi coast that night. We sprung for first class on the train car, and the biggest benefit was a touch of air condition, and meeting some cool people on the way down to help occupy the three-plus hour train ride. We stopped on in Naples for pizza, and were not disappointed. The place we chose to was crowded, grungy and only served two kinds of pie. Our driver was nice enough to stop a few miles away so that we eat our pizza and drink a beer over a specular view of the ocean. We arrived at our hotel (which was beautiful) in the small Amalfi town of Priano in time for dinner.

For our first full day on the coast, we headed down to the beach. We rented chairs and an umbrella (along with a Jones' size bottle of sunscreen). The man next to us, who closely resembled a catcher’s mit, was only slightly perturbed at the shade it provided him. Note: Everyone in Italy wears a bikini - and a small one at that. Despite some of those views, the water was a gorgeous blue green and the swimming area was perfect.

While in this town, we were able to explore some of the coast, including Ravello, Amalfi and Positano. Since the two of us always seem have some sort of travel malfunction, it was no surprise that on this particular day all Italian public transportation was on strike, but randomly, starting at 4pm. This actually benefited us since were able to take a private ferry back later that evening that happened to provide some gorgeous views. Ravello was beautiful, and we had one of our best lunches yet; Fried rice balls and baked crepes with cheese. (Um, see why we’re fatties.) Unfortunately we didn’t have much time in this cute town, but managed to push our way onto the last bus to make it to Amalfi and then Pastiano. The former being more touristy, and Postiano, which was more bustling, but charming. We ended the night with a swim, and some sort of fatty dinner.

One of our favorite days in Priano was chilling at the pool, which is almost always unoccupied. We stopped for our typical lunch, bottle of white and then finished the afternoon with reading and a nap. Our dinner was one of our best and biggest splurges, at Hosteria Del Pino. We had the local dish of squid and potatoes to start and some the most incredibly plump mussels. Nate had a light, crispy fried squid and prawns. This was only the beginning of our dinner, and we contemplated an exit because we were so stuffed. Not to worry, the two of us managed to force down our main dish, cookies and Irish coffee.

I think it was our day on the boat that was by far a favorite. We took a medium-sized speed boat to the nearby Island of Capri, and while the island itself is worth a visit, it was the actual stops along that way that were best. I'm not sure that meeting Dolly Parton herself could compare to swimming in the gorgeous blue Mediterranean Sea and greeted with a cold beer. It was a perfect way to end our visit to Amalfi.

The next morning we left for Rome, fully educated on train class. We splurged on the first-class tickets for the high-speed AE train to Rome from Naples. This made the trip less than an hour long, and they give you champagne and peanuts for being fancy pants. We arrived at our hotel, A View of Rome, in time to change clothes and walk to the city center where we visited the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps and a few other popular sites. The positive was that they are truly beautiful attractions steeped in history, and it felt great to get a bit of exercise. The downside is that we were one of a million people jammed into history hell. It’s like a more beautiful and historic Times Square. Of course, this called for a drink, and we found a fantastic beer store near our hotel. The shop had a great selection of beers and a dog wandering around the store as a mascot.

On our second day in Rome we woke up early to visit the Vatican museum. After a nap, we moseyed over to St. Peter’s Basilica to see if the line was still a mile long, and surprisingly, there was none. Really, it was an incredibly beautiful sight, and it’s shocking that the two of us didn’t burst into flames upon entering. That evening we wanted to check out the Monti neighborhood, and it did not disappoint. We were out of tourist area, and found great wine bars. We had an incredible dinner (the most perfect gnocchi ever), and ended up at an Ice Bar. They gave us cloak-type of getups, and had banquettes made of ice to lounge in. We didn't lounge long, and the owner made a comment on how short we stayed.

Thought the Ice Bar proved to be one of our latest (I think we stayed up until midnight) nights, we woke up and set our sights on the Coliseum, which was Nate's version of Dollywood. Despite the heat (we’d had perfect weather up until now) it was truly impressive. A quick mosey around the gigantic antique stadium, and we were off to find the oldest Porchetta shop in town. It was indeed old, and we sat at one of the three tables to devour a Porchetta with a tumbler of red wine that came from a faucet. The owner was welcoming to us taking photos of both him, and his prized pig. After our greasy, porky lunch, it was, of course, naptime. We rested our heads before heading to a different ("young, fun, hip") neighborhood in the Traverse. We found the best wine bar here that served incredible snacks, and rather than having our normal multi-course dinner, we decided to find more places like this and hop around. Despite the Irish bar we stumbled into, there are some awesome bars in this area and a great chance to see what the local peeps do on the weekend. (That would be the same as anywhere else in Italy: eat, drink and smoke.)

We celebrated right on our last night of the vacation and despite managing to keep up our boozy lunch at the Dublin airport, it was clear (by the fit of our pants) that this lifestyle had to end.

Summer

I'm blogging today on a very special occasion. You may have noticed (but most likely not), that back in the days of when we were fresh-faced off the boat from the Midwest, Nate got a job as a nurse at NYU Med Center here in NYC. He later went on to go to grad school to become a CRNA at Columbia University, and he JUST NOW finished he last day paying to work. And though he's had the pleasures of watching an abundance of foot amputations in the Bronx and birthing in Harlem, he's chosen to work as a Nurse Anethesist at NYU again. I'm certain it's so he can boss around his former employees.

In Blue Collar News:

I may have not graduated from an Ivy League University, but I am on a bowling team, and...wait for it...the Lois Lanes won the prestigious Bar Champs last season. Sure, we may have been second-to-last scoring on the league, but we made up for it by drinking everyone else under the table, and having an incredible amount of pep and spirit. Our zeal won us a $100 bar tab (that came out to approximately one free beer each), and a chipped mug.

In old people News:

I'm making rhubarb pies, and we're both contributing to homemade pizza. We commissioned the Amish to make us this picnic table to eat said pies.

In Habits News:

We've hit up the Belmont and Saratoga races this year. Giddy-up!

it's still winter

While the rest of the U.S. is enjoying wet t-shirt contests and foam parties on their sunny spring break, the lovely residents of New York City are mercifully dealing with yet another snowfall. Nate and I wait patiently for the sidewalk cafes to spill out and the restaurants to open their windows as the weather gets warmer; but until then we're biding our time holed-up in our heated apartment with Miller Lowlife and board games.

Year Seven

Nate and I just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary on November 29th. I can hardly believe that seven years have gone by since we said our vows with ol' Dart Henry at Elfindale Chapel in our hometown. We celebrated by spending the weekend prior in Hudson Valley doing what we most love when it's freezing cold in NYC; eating good food and drinking good drinks. But on our actual day, which was a Monday, we took the day off and decided that we'd trim our tree and have leisurely lunch.

What I have learned after seven years of marriage is that there are certain things that Nate does not like to do and causes instant agitation. One is putting together anything from ikea and another is getting anything down from our poor excuse of a storage unit in the guest bedroom. This happens to be where our holiday items were stored so I decided to have these extracted on the day before our anniversary in order not to start the day off on the wrong foot. Surprising, this was pretty painless and we left the next day to choose and decorate our perfect tree from down the street (I’d liken the beaute to nothing short of a Charlie Brown wonder).

Suffice to say, I’m like my mother and grandmother in the way that I get hot and bothered by a piece of glass on a string. I’ve been known to collect ornaments from places we've traveled over the years and am giddy when they arrive in the mail from my mom in July; even if it's a plastic pig. Nate and I both love decorating each year and have our favorite ones to put on the tree. Though I’m easily the most laid back of the two, I try desperately not to rearrange his ever-so-sloppy ornament placement and have worked hard over the years to not suggest a more “appealing” place for his Royal’s ball. Either way, it's one of my favorite times of the year and after our tree was trimmed, we left for a long lunch at a French restaurant and spent a few hours drinking wine into early evening.

We decided to go home to open our gifts, make dessert and just as we were toasting year seven to a glass of champagne our tree came tumbling to the floor, ornaments and all. The only bonus was that after we finally fashioned it back in the stand, I was able to decorate again with what ornaments survived.

Clubbing

I’ve found my way into a few clubs since moving to NYC. I wish I could
say that that I’m part of a key club or something more exciting, but my
participation is more along the lines of boring to lame. I’ve been in three
different book clubs since moving here and two have since dissipated;
once of those I think will revive at some point, but my current book club is going strong and is less of the pocket protector variety and more wine and gossip, with a good amount of stimulating conversation.

My favorite and most long-standing club is my cooking club. This is a
group of my good girl friends who, spoiler alert, all love to cook.
Our original name was, The Finer Things Cooking Club and later morphed
into the Fat Girls Cooking Club of Greater Hudson Valley, reason being
that we eat more than we actually cook at our club. Cooking club
changes host each month and the hostess chooses the theme and cuisine.
We’ve had Greek, Thai, Southern, Spanish, Moroccan, Brinner, Italian and so
much other goodness. We stuff our faces, drink wine and swear to wear
maternity pants every month. One of our lovely member's semi-maintains a blog here: http://goodfoodwithgoodfriends.blogspot.com/. Next month is my turn turn for holiday cookie exchange. I'm going to rent a fat suit and dress as Santa.

Acapulco

...or as most people know it Johnny Weissmuller's personal playground. Anne and I recently took a trip down to Acapulco, actually we went in August during my brief respite from school. We utilized our airline miles to go down and that proved to be quite fortuitous as we would later find out (that was what I call in the amateur blog biz a "teaser"). Our flight was scheduled to leave about 1:00 AM on a Saturday morning. On paper this sounded good to us as we planned to have a few beers, head to the airport, have a few more beers, and then sleep on the plane to Mexico City where we had a fairly long layover. Then finally we were to take a quick flight to Acapulco and be in by noon to the resort.

The first red flag we encountered was only realized in hindsight, the agent at the ticket counter where we checked strongly advised us to carry our bags on and not check them. No big deal at the time, as we intended on doing this anyway (another teaser). Then, our "beers at the airport" plan was foiled by the fact that every establishment that sells alcohol in the international terminal of JFK is shut tighter than a nun's knees by 11:00 pm. This development had me fairly irritated, but I moved on as it's hard to spoil the beginning of a vacation.

The flight to Mexico City was great, the plane was only about 30% full, red flag #2 (I should change this column title to Acapulco Teasers...wait that sounds like a strip club), which meant that we each had an entire exit row to ourselves and were able to stretch out and sleep quite comfortably. The flight landed right on time and we made our way through customs and to the terminal for our flight to Acapulco. After waiting several hours with all of the other passengers for the flight, we learned it was cancelled. Huge bummer, a delay between us and our vacation. Oh, did I mention the flight was Air Mexicana? Have you heard of that one? Oh, no? That might be because it's out of business. As of the morning we landed in Mexico City. As in, we were in Mexico City with tickets to flights that no longer existed on an airline that was no longer in business. Needless to say we were rather distraught upon learning this. We pleaded with the manager to do something, in fairness he was quite sympathetic to our cause but simply kept saying "we're broke". We learned our options were to book a flight on another airline if we wanted to leave the airport via plane, otherwise we could walk/drive/take a bus/crawl/live there forever. As we waited in an incredibly long line for another airline with everyone else who was charting the far reaches of shit creek with us, the manager whom we had spoken with previously came and found us in line. He was communicating with someone over the phone, and telling us to hurry and come with him. He told us our flight on Mexicana was reinstated and to run, nee, RUN to the gate to catch the plane.

We sprinted through the terminal (well, I slow jogged and Anne sprinted) to the gate. There we were met with new people who were not sure if we were going or not. (Bear in mind that Anne speaks essentially no spanish, and I speak very little and seeing as we weren't in need of any "papas fritas", I was useless in this situation). Eventually, we got boarding passes, felt a wave of relieve and headed down the jetway. Whoops, stopped again this time I could see the inside of the plane, taste it even. More delay, eventually let on board. More delay, more official looking people coming in and out of the plane, inspecting us and leaving again. Finally we took off and were on our way. You can imagine the sense of relief that was felt by the passengers on board. All 3 of us. Aside from Anne and I, there was one other gentleman on the plane. Stewardesses were taking photos together, we took photos, it was quite a scene. Beers were free, and that is how we were on board the second to last flight ever flown on Air Mexicana (the same plane returned to Mexico City with a lot of people running on as we deplaned, looking much like we probably had an hour earlier.

Anyway, after spending a couple of hours on the phone with American while we were at the resort, we had to spend about $250 bucks for a flight to Mexico City, American got us a new flight back to New York (this is where having used miles came in handy), and credited us back the miles for the trip to Acapulco and back. A pain yes, but it could have been much worse. On to the vacay itself.

We arrived at our resort, Las Brisas a couple of hours before check in and were entertained in the lobby with pink margaritas and a very hospitable staff. This resort is really cool, it's heyday was clearly the 60s/70s but it is extremely well kept and clean. The kicker here though is that each room has its own private swimming pool. As a result we didn't plan on doing much aside from swimming, napping, eating, and drinking. On that last note we decided to make a beer run into town (the resort is not all inclusive). By beer run, I mean we went to a local Wal-Mart (vacation!!!), bought 4 cases of beer, two bottles of rum, a bottle of vodka, all of the mixers, and a blender. We were quite the spectacle both in the Wal-Mart checkout line and when we arrived back at the hotel lobby. (the remainder of the week was spent meeting looks from the staff of subtle grins and chuckles). At last, the room was ready and the hotel jeeps (this is how they take you to your room, very hilly) took us and our bar up to our room. Our room was fantastic, a nice patio overlooking the pool, and all of that overlooking the entire Acapulco bay. It was incredibly scenic. We settled in and had a nice room service meal and drank beers by the pool for the rest of the day.

The next day we went down to the beach club. The hotel has a separate beach area that is all the way down the mountain at the water. A van takes you down and it's private for the hotel guests. We had some nice drinks by the pool there, including a fresh coconut hacked open with a machete and filled to the brim with different types of rum. We also had a really great meal at restaurant with waves crashing in on the rocks just below. We went back up to the room that afternoon, did swimming, and went down to the nicer restaurant on the resort was I was kindly asked to stay near the bar as I didn't have on dress pants. So we sat with the open night air blowing in and looked out over the bay and had drinks.

The next day we headed down into the city of Acapulco for the first time. It's really not that nice of a city, not terrible but kind of dirty. I swung through the Wal-Mart a second time to pick up some khaki pants (my mexilones) and we went all the way around the bay to see old Acapulco. The cab driver was very determined to tell us all about Johnny Weissmuller and showed us where he lived (in a large room at an old hotel) and all of the stars who used to come there etc. For those who don't know, Johnny Weissmuller is a former Olympic swimmer who played Tarzan in the movies back in the 30s or something. He's been dead for a hell of a long time but is still quite big in Acapulco for whatever reason. Anyway, we were rapidly moving toward the point of explaining how we couldn't give a shit about Johnny Weissmuller when mercifully we were taken to a bar built on cliff's where you could watch the world famous Acapulco cliff divers. This is as touristy as it gets there and as a result our expectations could not have been lower. However, we were both quite pleasantly surprised. The cliff diving show is really pretty cool. First of all, the cliff's they dive off of are damn high. I would say at least 100 feet or more. Second, the area of water they dive in is basically a crack in between two cliffs. So the breadth of the water they land in is only maybe 20 feet wide, which might as well be a kiddy pool to me. Third, the water they dive in is evidently quite shallow, so much so that they have to time their landing into the water with when a wave comes in so it is deeper. Finally, they don't just do a straight up dive, they'll go off of the very top and do flips and all sorts of tricks on their way down before finishing with a dive. The show is not singular reason to book your flight to Acapulco today, but if you ever decide to go it's certainly worth seeing.

After we headed back to the hotel, we again took a swim and probably napped somewhere in there. Then, armed with my fancy new pants from Wal-Mart, we confidently marched into the restaurant for an excellent meal of duck for me, and Anne had some fresh tuna. It was really a nice meal and worth the cost of the pants to be sure.

One morning we woke up and decided we ought to do an excursion that day. Since our budget was a little pinched from the unexpected expense of buying a plane ticket, we opted to move down form the deep sea fishing to a nice boat cruise around the bay, or that was how it was advertised to us. The price was right and it included all of the drinks you wanted. Yes, a booze cruise. Seemed fun, and we both wanted to get out onto the water. As it turns out, the bay is quite rough. The boat was a pretty large boat with probably 200 people on it, but big enough that it didn't feel crowded. They had a band and nice roof deck with good views. The boat really did sway quite a lot the entire way. Shortly after departure Anne started looking/feeling pretty green. I got a little snack and some beers and that really helped. I also moved to the center of the boat, reasoning that the swaying would be less in the middle as opposed to the edge which was moving up and down pretty solidly. After a few minutes, she settled down and was fine for the rest of the trip. Others, uh, didn't fair so well. Before we got off we had dubbed it the Puke-Ship-Lollipop. It was comically bad. People were hugging trashcans everywhere, as soon as the bathroom door would open, someone else would fly. I saw one girl throw up in a sack, and another over the back railing. I, sadistically, was getting quite a kick out of it. Otherwise, it was very lovely. On the way back we stopped off for a traditional goat stew, made only on Thursdays, at a local restaurant in town. The place came highly recommended and the food was excellent. That pretty much capped our day and was back to the room once more.

As it's been quite sometime since were there, (I really slacked on getting this up) I'm having some trouble remember day-by-day how things went, so I'll try to hit some highlights. One night we went to eat at this restaurant not on the resort. It was a pretty nice atmosphere with decent food and it also overlooked the bay. The really noteworthy part of the meal though was when randomly during the meal these huge movie screens descended from the ceiling and covered the large windows which offered the view. The lights were dimmed and we were treated to a video of a concert of a Mexican band that was probably a 7 piece band backed by an orchestra. The first song was all in spanish, and I of course didn't know it, but the second was a rather emotional rendition of "Knights in White Satin" sung in English but with Spanish accents. It was totally bizarre and we were really fighting back laughter but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Also, sometime during the trip I got a touch of food poisoning and spent an entire night and day sweating out a terrible fever and running to the bano (spanish) for various reasons. That sucked, but I got over it pretty quickly. All in all, the trip was great though. The room was really nice and we definitely intend on going back there when we are ready for another relaxing vacation. The trip home was uneventful, thankfully, and it was back to NYC for a healthy dose of reality.

L.A.

I went to LA last month to see my little bro. To New Yorkers, LA is the nemesis but there's very little in common between the two places. For one: Everyone in LA drives in the world's most insane traffic yet seem to have no stress whatsoever. Secondly: Everyone in LA smokes Capris - the smallest cigarette known to man.

I'll always be partial to the East Coast after living in San Francisco, but had only been to LA a handful of times, including business trips. I was ready to immerse myself in all-things-LA and this mean busting out my flippy-floppys and getting a spray tan. Just kidding about the spray tan.

Austin picked me up from the airport and planned an awesome day of bike riding around Santa Monia and Venice, shopping, sushi and drinks at a rooftop bar to watch the sunset over the beach before karaoke. It's hard to be hatin' this life. I was meeting my Bay Area Bestie, Diana, and we were going to make it a weekend at The Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. This place was fantastic. Very mod with an awesome pool/cabana area. D met me that night for dinner at Bazaar (this place was total LA) and then to an early rise for our class at Slimmons. We frantically search for an outfit for our Richard Simmons debut and arrived at his studio in time to sweat. Richard is one-part adorable and one-part insane. His class could only be summed up as a day at gay camp with Richard being the camp counselor who had outfit changes between songs. D and I were overjoyed to get pictures and kisses from Richie at the end of the (exaustingly long) class.

We finished the weekend with drinks by the pool on Sat, dinner at Test Kitchen (so good) followed by dancing with our gays. This was the perfect girl/brother weekend and I'm stoked (cali shop talk) to get back asap

Fall highlights

Fall in NYC is absolutely beautiful and entirely too short. Nate and I have been taking advantage of so many things to do in the city. We spent a recent weekend playing tourists which included a little field trip to Times Square to see the musical, Memphis (incredible!). This trip would not have been complete without a stop for TGIFriday's for chicken fingers and a glass of their finest wine. We capped the evening off with a drink at the rooftop Marriott Marquis, where you can find not only un-parallel views of the city, but the restaurant rotates to boot!
Last weekend we saw Daniel Tosh at the Beacon Theater for his Tosh.0 tour and though I still can't figure out which team he's playing for, he's certainly sealed the deal for best comedian ever. This was also Halloween weekend and NYC is a fantastic place to celebrate my favorite holiday. As per usual, we (or me) are in talks about what will be the best costume of all time, but manage not to buy a thing until an hour before we walk out the door. This means that Nate was his old standby-the hillbilly hodgepodge costume and I was a cross-dressing detective.
Last night we went to see the Black Crows and nothing could have prepared us for how awesome this three hour show was. They played at Nokia Theater which was an great venue.
Tonight I'm reviewing a new restaurant and we'll go to check out the place before one of my BFF's bday parties at one of our favorite bars in the city, The Blue Owl.

Lost In Austin

Get it? Rhymes. Hey friends, it's my turn to put a few words down on the page and this time it's about a trip to Austin I took with the wife a couple of weeks ago. We have always wanted to go there, and thanks to Delta bumping us last fall we were able to fly their for free (not a cheap place to fly surprisingly). We rented a car when we landed, and much to the chagrin of the rental car guy who desperately (forcefully?) tried to upsell us on a new camaro ("a lot more power in this one") we drove out in our chevy cobalt with black leather interior. For the record black leather interior in Austin is closely ranked with other great ideas like a ski-mask in Ecuador and wool sweaters while visiting the sun. We stayed at the Hotel San Jose, a newly and nicely renovated 50's motel with a hip patio/bar area and a nice pool. However, prior to checking in we went straight from the airport to Iron Works BBQ. It came recommended to us, but I honestly found it dry and uninteresting. I went for brisket since Texas is beef country, Anne's BBQ beef sandwich was better, but mostly because the sauce masked the dryness of the meat. Full and undeterred, we checked and went straight to Barton Springs Pool. This place is pretty cool, and I'd recommend it to anyone heading to Austin though it's probably best enjoyed when it's really hot. This place is a giant (HUGE actually) natural spring swimming pool. The edge is cement and rectangle like a typical swimming pool, but the inside is all natural spring with a natural bottom (feels like walking in a river or lake...full of ice). There is a diving board on the side, and watching people go off that is occasionally impressive but mostly hilarious. Watching knees buckle as they are unable to withstand the recoil of the board is entertaining to say the least, and many backs and belly's were busted during our stay. Anne went off of the board twice, both times playing it safe with a standard dive. I finally jumped in after fearing that I might actually cook if I didn't go soon. The water was subzero, and even after 10 minutes I was nowhere near used to it. I clawed my way out of the water and lay in a fetal position on the hot cement as my bluish skin restored it's healthy paste tone. OK, maybe that was an exaggeration but the water was damn cold.
We headed back to the hotel afterward and hit up the pool area for some cold beers and michelata's (a sort of bloody mary-esque drink with beer as the main component instead of tomato and vodka). The water here was very toasty and felt great after the natural spring. We then hit up a shower and a quick nap before off to dinner. We ate a known tex-mex place called Chuy's. This meal more than made up for the subpar BBQ we had earlier. Excellent margaritas, chips, salsa, and the food in general was delicious. We lucked out on the wait, since only one table in the restaurant is for two people and we were the only party of two there, so while everyone else waited 45 minutes to sit we were sipping drinks and munching on chips and salsa at our table. After dinner it was back to the hotel to drop off the car and taxi over to the Broken Spoke. An Austin institution for honky tonk music and dancing. We paid $20 for a two step lesson and drank $5 pitchers of Lone Star beer all night. As for two stepping no one felt threatened by my dancing prowess but I wasn't the worst one there which was my goal. Also the women's bathroom was equipped with stalls that had American flag shower curtains for doors, and the men's room only had a trough urinal (god forbid you have to drop a deuce) which was inhabited by the largest cricket I've ever seen. If crickets fiddle their legs, this one could have sat in with the band. After a night of "two-stepping" and beers we decided we'd had enough for the day and headed back to the hotel. The cab ride home confirmed that the Austin cabbies have no idea where anything is and they don't know where they are going very slowly. Additionally, when I finally got my phone out to look at a map, they don't understand where you are telling them to go despite the fact that outwardly they appear to be fluent in english. I guess I'm used to cabbies here, but these guys were beyond imagination, and the subsequent one we took did nothing to dispel this notion. Upon arriving back at the hotel, we decided a bed time snack was in order and decided to head up to a pizza place we had heard was good earlier in the day. We asked a couple of people if the place was good on our way there and they said it's pretty good "unless you're from New York or something". It was actually pretty good, but I'm not sure they were exactly making authentic New York pizza. Admittedly, it probably wasn't the smartest thing to try to get that there. From then on we stuck with the food the locals are known for and had great meals.
The next morning we woke up late and had brunch at another tex-mex restaurant down the street from the hotel called Guero's. The food here was also amazing, tex-mex is absolutely the way to go down in Austin. With our belly's full we headed out for a drive around Austin, we saw the campus some different neighborhoods and basically just took in the city. It's really nice down there and aside from the heat, it doesn't feel like any place I've been in Texas before. We headed back to the hotel and spent a little more time out at the pool hanging out. Then showered and got ready to go out to a dive bar we'd read about called Ginny's Little Longhorn. The attraction on Sunday's at Ginny's is chicken shit bingo. Which is a little misleading in that it's not really bingo. They set up a huge board painted with squares, each square has a number painted in it. Over the top of the board is a small pen made of chicken wire. You buy a ticket for two dollars, and the lady that owns the place, Ginny, puts her chicken, Penny, in the pen. Whatever number it shits on is the winner, and the person with that ticket wins all of the money that was spent on tickets. It's really a hell of a lot of fun actually. They serve $2 bottles of Lone Star, free chili dogs, and a damn good band plays in the corner. It was an awesome day really, and I would highly recommend it. Ginny even let Anne hold the chicken. We headed back to the hotel again, and went out for some really nice oysters and other food a cool restaurant that I forgot the name of and called it a night again.
Finally, on our last day there we woke up and went for breakfast at Magnolia Cafe. This place had some really good traditional breakfast food, and massive portions. After breakfast, I picked up some vintage shirts that I found on a sale rack for $5 apiece, a steal. We then drove around Austin a little more and headed outside of town to a place called County Line BBQ. It was located down on the banks of a river and was in a really cool spot. However, again the food was not that great. So far I was disappointed in the quality of BBQ here. I know that Salt Lick is supposed to be the mecca of BBQ here, but it's pretty far out of town and for a short stay we didn't want to devote that much time to going out there. After lunch we drove off the highway and sat out by Lake Austin which was nice for bit, and then we headed back to check out and make our way back to the airport. Coincidentally the same day that President Obama was there. After checking in and going through security, we got to watch Airforce One take off, which was a lot like any other plane taking off however it is worth noting that it is massive plane. After that bit of interest had passed I was happy to see that Salt Lick has an outpost at the airport. I figured I might as well give it a try on my way home. I wasn't particularly hungry, but I'm so glad I did. The brisket sandwich I had was unreal. By far the best BBQ I had in Austin. I can only imagine that the actual restaurant puts the airport version to shame. I will not make the mistake of skipping that place the next time we go back, which we definitely intend on doing.

That 70’s Shirt

In case you’re wondering why Nate is wearing the same orange and brown shirt in every single photo that has been posted since the beginning of summer; it’s because of a bet. I think that he’s gonna win it.

Saratoga

Last weekend we went to one of our favorite places in NY State: Saratoga Springs. Nate and I go at least once each season for the horse races and this year we had two of our favorite couples join us. We found a new place to reserve near the track and though my "lucky" coin sock only brought in one win, the weather was absolutely perfect and our cabin had a porch that was just nature-y enough. Better times could not have been had. Until next year...

summer so far

summer has been fun so far; at least the weekends. we've been jam-packed with fun plans and are working to enjoy the city to maximum capacity. we're also enjoying record high temps that feel as you're roasting in a fire pit. anyhow, june included a trip to long beach. this was our first time there and it's a cute beach town that beats the pants off off most in close proximity to the city. for one, you can actually swim in the ocean without fear of being stabbed by a hypodermic needle. also, the number of people is far less, making for a much more pleasurable day at the beach. we also went to brew fest on governor island with friends and spent the 4th of july the same group. our friend's parents live in a darling little town in the garden state and host a 4th of july bash each year complete with fireworks, a parade, bbq and beer pong (not in this order). there also happens to be a county fair across the street where i was able to get my zipper on. we were lucky enough to spend the actual 4th of july on a friend's boat where we went zoomed up to hudson valley and spent the evening in the city on the water watching the fireworks. next year will surely suck after such a great day.

i like meat

I took a vegan gluten-free dessert cooking class on Monday night for a writing assignment. Heaven knows this would never be my topic of choice considering that I consumed about a half pound of bacon in one setting last night. But...I love to bake and am always down for a challenge. By the end of the evening, the class of ten students had made over six recipes and about 200 desserts. AND, the sweets were incredible. I even sneaked one into Nate's lunch and he approved. I won't be whipping these up on a daily basis, but it would be handy for one of those annoying friend's with food allergies.

*I stopped for a cheeseburger on the way home.
** These are photos of some of our concoctions.

Veggin Out

We've been doing a lot of chillin' on the back patio as of late. The weather in NYC has been top notch and some of our herbs and veggies are coming in. Nate has taken a shine to grilling about everything that he can get his hangs on. Last weekend we experimented with shell fish and learned that mussels make a better meal than clams. We also make some bomb bruschetta with our very own basils and tomato. My radish and sugar snap peas are not looking quite as promising, but I'm still giving them love. I'm already dreading winter.

Memorial

Memorial weekend always makes me miss Table Rock Lake. I miss hanging out with all of our Missouri friends and sitting on the boat all.weekend.long. I also particularly miss the abundance of Budweiser bikinis here in NYC. It could be because there is not a body of water within a 5-mile radius of my apartment and my Hampton's house is currently on the fritz. In any case, we had ourselves a nice little “staycatation” as well, everyone likes to say.

Saturday we took New Jersey’s finest mode of public transportation to Monmouth Park for a picnic with friends. They have nice umbrellas and tables and you can bring your own wine, beer and whatever else floats your boat. I’ve quickly established this as my second home. Momma did not come back with a new pair of shoes but after two bottles of wine, we met new BFFs on the train who were on their way to a Bon Jovi concert and happy to share their Bush Tall Boys with us.

Sunday was self-proclaimed “pizza tour” where we decided to finally try three of the places that have been tacked to our bulletin board. Keste, Motorino and Volce. We shopped around and took our time between each place, but these two little piggies had no problem polishing off two whole pies and a Sicilian slice. This tour was long overdue.

Spring Break!

I wanted to use this blog as our journal for NYC or wherever else we decide to end up in our life. I love to go back and read the old posts about what we were doing and places that we frequented. It’s amazing how I’ve already forgotten about those times and it’s only been three years since we’ve moved here. But somehow it’s turned into a travel blog. Whatever it may be, we’re not so great at keeping up-to-date. I’ll go back to March when Nate and I took a week-long trip for Spring Break. We had been gearing up all winter for a wet t-shirt contest in Cancun, but plans had changed and we remembered that we were 30-somthings, so Napa seemed like a better fit. We joined friends for a few days and had more than a good time. I’ll only give highlights. My favorites included:
*Karaoke and Chinatown bar day w/ Shawn, Paul, D and Michelle in San Francisco. *Hanging out with old friends, Noah and Kelly.
*Bocce ball in Napa.
*Oysters by the dozen.
*Bikes in Sonoma (until D fell and broke her face).

Our Decent Weekend in Feb

Last weekend was Valentine’s Day, Nate’s birthday AND Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, so needless to say, we were pretty jam packed with celebrating all weekend. I took Nate to see Judah Friedlander (the guy with the trucker hat and thick glasses from 30 Rock) who was doing stand up here for his gift. This was a nice little gift to myself as well, as he was incredibly funny. We had dinner at Bills Burger and Bar before the show and seeing that I’ve decided to lay off the red meat for Lent, it made for a nice farewell to my favorite animal. I highly recommend this place as the service, atmosphere, and most of all, burgers, were awesome. I also had an “adult” milkshake (featuring booze) that I managed to suck down in approximately 2 minutes. The rest of the weekend was spent trying for a sweet, sweet Valentine’s Day baby. Just kidding. That was for my sister-in-law.

Donde Esta El Jones Clan-o

Hey friends, sorry for the huge gap in posts. The two of us have been pretty slammed with school, work, and day to day life. As a result we've not been on here much lately. I'd like to promise more regular postings, but I'm afraid I can't at this point, although we'll give our best effort. Our most recent adventure was a trip to Spain, most of which was spent just Anne and I, but we met up with some friends for the last few days in Barcelona. This trip, coupled with my break from school, felt like the right time to break our streak of no posts. Anne and I found a ridiculous deal on some flights to Spain last year, and left for the trip on Christmas Day. Flying out of JFK to Barcelona, via Madrid, we departed after a lovely Christmas dinner at the airport, where we shared laughs and all around merriment over some sandwiches and beer. The flight had a rather inauspicious debut as we were seated behind a couple who had a 3 year old in tow. Needless to say we were both worried about the prospect of sitting behind an inconsolable screaming youth. We were not disappointed. I'm no expert on parenting, in fact I'd probably be lousy at it, but it seems fundamentally wrong to expect a child of that age to behave appropriately on such a long flight. Afterall, I'm 31 and it's all I can do to not go crazy when confined to a seat that long. This little dickens appeared to only have two settings, sleep and full throated scream. Sadly, the sleep setting was rarely dialed in. This made the 8 hour flight feel more like 80, which roughly equated to the number of beers I consumed. We did our best to not murder the parents, and make the best of the flight, but were both pretty glad to be off of the plane when we got to Madrid. After a sleepless flight, we connected to Barcelona, squeezed in a 45 minute nap on that flight, and settled in for our trip to really begin.
After getting off the plane in Barcelona, and failing to find an airport vasectomy clinic, we hooked up with our rental car. Our plan was pretty loosely made, we had booked a room for two nights later on, but had a few days sprinkled around to wing it before we were to be back in Barcelona on the 31st. We had booked something along the lines of a roller skate, but were pleased to recieve a complementary upgrade to a car with actual tires instead of shopping cart wheels. We scooted out in our hatchback Peugot 5 speed, with a plan to cruise up the mediterranean coast and find a town that seemed cool and stay there for the night. A few wrong turns later we were on the coastal highway, heading north towards France and thoroughly enjoying our drive. Initially, the drive was a straight shot up the coast with the beach bordering the road on the right, and various shops on the left. The ocean was as near as pulling off and walking 30 yards from the passenger door. Needless to say this was quite scenic, but nothing like what we had in store.
We stopped off for some snacks and caffeine to fuel ourselves to the night. Neither of us had slept much but were feeling pretty good with the excitement of "getting there". I always try to buy snacks that are unavailable at home, in this case some potato chips flavored like ham. I'm not sure why America hasn't embraced the meat-flavored potato chip but this is the second trip in a row where we've had them (sausage pringles in Japan), and they are the most delicious chip flavor. We also had something called Boca Bits, which I bought because I didn't know what they were. They turned out to look like pork rinds a bit, but they tasted more like Bugles. With a light snack on board we made our way farther up. For a time reference, this last part took about 3 hours, and it's roughly 4:00 pm local time now. As we drove farther up the coast, the towns became fewer and farther between, and the road climbed up into some small coastal mountains/hills. This road evolved from a nice scenic drive, into the most beautiful drive either of us had ever taken. It curved around every turn and bend of the mountains and followed the coast. Now the ocean was still roughly as close as pulling over and walking 30 yards from the passenger door, only now you would need to travel about 1000 feet straight down to the water. Initially I was having a field day stress testing the Peugot on the curvy roads, but it turns out that Anne has all of the intestinal fortitude of a newborn, so I was forced to slow to a crawl which pleased all of the locals piling up behind me on the road. As evening came on us, we were both ready to stop anywhere to eat and be done traveling for the first time in over a day. As the road gradually wound down to sea level, we entered the town of San Feliu. We decided this would be a fine place to spend our first night since we didn't want or need to press on, and we knew it would be a short drive to Begur, our pre-planned destination for the next night, the next day.
The nice thing about traveling when we did to the coast of Spain is it is the offseason, neither of us are real "beach" people, and that is the draw here for most tourists. As a result, most of the people around are locals, prices are very cheap, and you basically have your run of the place. The downside is that many hotels are seasonal, and the resulting accomodations are limited. Our first stop was at a restaurant, where Anne ran in and got a couple of recommendations for places to stay. The first one we tried was closed for the season, however there were people working there, renovating etc., and the owner happened to be there who recommended another place, different than the one recommended by the restaurant. We decided to try the restaurants recommendation first since we knew where it was, and its proximity to the water, and several restaurants. We drove over to the hotel which proved to be a huge challenge, so much so we never actually made it. We could see the hotel from the street we were on, a one-way, and drove down to circle back around to the street where the hotel was. We crossed several one-way streets before we could make a left. My thinking was, another left and we'll be headed the right way. However, after the first left we were now too far behind, so I'd need to make two more lefts. I took the first one I could, which was an extremely narrow street, so narrow that cars were parked on the sidewalk literally inches from buildings while the other half of the car still blocked half of the "street". I had to drive half on the sidewalk with literally inches to spare on either side of the car to pass. Oh, to make it easier, I'm in a stick shift and this street is going straight up a massive incline to the top of a hill. Finally, we reach the summit to find, yes! - a dead end. My two options were to try to turn around in a little path with an incline far steeper then the one we had just climbed, or try to back down this roughly mile long hill on the sidewalk avoiding parked cars. My plan was to back down the ultra steep side street (also a dead end, FYI), and then pull back up onto the original street, only I didn't have room to back down it, so I had to go nose first and then reverse up the massive incline. With my knees literally shaking, and the strong aroma of burning clutch in the air I successfully executed the turn. So with Anne looking through her fingers and me spewing a prodigious stream of expletives at the road design and lack of signage, we abandoned hotel 1 for the other recommendation. Fortunately, the sailing was much smoother from here on. No more harrowing road experiences, and other than getting lost a bit, the rest of the trip wasn't too bad. Although we did find it annoying that everywhere we went, there was excellent signage directing you to your destination, until the last couple of miles. It's like they're thinking, "hey we got you this close, you can find it from here". This was a bit frustrating, but all in all a minor glitch.
That first night we landed in a really nice hotel, turns out the recommendation was a good one. Our room had a very large balcony, and the bathroom featured both a shower and separate bathtub that was long enough for me to totally lay down in with legs straight out.
We took a 2 hour nap, and went out for some dinner around 8pm. Based on the hotel's recommendation we drove to nearby town, which was quite busy. We parked the car, and set out on foot. We were both basically starving so we had a coffee at one place, and then the next place we saw stopped for some food. We ordered two traditional Tapas plates, manchego (spanish cheese), whihc is served with sliced up baguette that has olive oil and fresh tomato spread on it (they basically slice the tomato, and squeeze all of the "guts" out of onto the bread and spread it that way). The other dish we had was fresh anchovies served in a similar fashion only without the tomato guts on the bread. This place was off the beaten path a bit, and the food was really good. Anne ordered a "glass" of wine, which turned out to be a bottle of wine (this is when we learned wine is cheap there), and I had a beer...and half of Anne's wine. With some sustenance on board and a little drink we stopped off at this little arcade where we played some games, one of which was an old timey animatronic shooting game where the machines reacted when you "shot" the targets (very much like something you would see at Silver Dollar City), only the reaction was me getting shot in the face with a squirt gun and then later me getting shot in the crotch with a different squirt gun. Good times. So with a wet crotch and full belly, we decided to head back to the hotel and take it on foot from there. We wound down the evening with a bottle of wine at our hotel, some delicious olives and hit the sack for some much needed sleep.
Our hotel included breakfast, a pretty heavy self serve deal, that included a griddle where you could fry your own bacon, I thought that was pretty cool so I fried up a few strips, which was really delicious. Then we cruised over to an open air market where I couldn't figure out how to work the parking meter, so we moved on defeated but not discouraged. Our drive took us on to Begur, a city right on the coast but up in the hills so not a beach town. After round two of signage that almost gets you there, stopping for directions once, we found our hotel, the Aiguaclara. A really cool old hotel, which was one of the nicer places we've stayed. Again, being the offseason, the hotel was relatively empty so they gave us a nicer room than we'd paid for, on the house. It had a sitting room, a big terrace right in the middle of the city center, and of course bedroom and bath. We settled in, and took a recommendation from the hotel owner (a really nice husband and wife) for a great place to get seafood right on the beach. About a 20 minute drive later, we were in a really small, secluded beach town called Tiamar. This is where I established myself as "most likely to forget essential items" by starting a trend of heading out without our translation book. I ordered some of the freshest calamari I've ever had served with a squid ink risotto, and Anne blindly order some fish dish which was phenomenal. As it is customary to have wine with a meal there, we ordered a nice bottle of white wine, and had a delicious lunch. The weather was cool, but clear and very beautiful. We then headed back to our hotel for a nap. I slept about 20 minutes but Anne was down for 2 hours. Bored I wandered around the city center (Begur was very small and very quiet), drank a couple of coffee's (you get espresso if you order coffee there) and then met back up with Anne. We again, decided to wing it for dinner. Ended up at what we later learned was a highly recommended restaurant. We had a phenomenal tuna carpaccio to start, Anne order an equally delicious seafood paella, and I had a maybe the best roasted duck I've ever tasted topped with foie gras (like the wine, foie gras is served almost everywhere and is infinitely cheaper than here). This is one of the best meals we had on the trip. We finished the evening at a very local bar called Callos, which was the name of the owner and, it turns out, the bartender that night. We had a nice conversation (as nice as possible given the language barrier), with the only two patrons and Callos (who was extremely drunk, that transcended the language issue without problem), while death metal played over VH1 rocks on the big screen (none of these guys was less than 40 years old and Callos was probably more like 60 so the music didn't exactly fit the atmosphere). We made brunch plans with these guys, and then forgot about them the next day. We finished the evening in the basement of our hotel which was set up as this cool "living room" with sofas and a self service bar.
The next day we also spent in Begur (two nights here), this time walking around since neither of us felt like being in the car. There was some really old ruins and lots of cool spanish architecture (my running joke was to note the brilliant spanish architecture, which I ran into the ground by day two but didn't give up on). After walking around for most of the morning, we had lunch at a really good restaurant called La Galena. We sat by an open fire place, and ordered some octopus to start, which was beyond amazing. Actually they started us with a little bite of some unbelievable chorizo (different than Mexican chorizo, more like the consistency of salami normally, but this was fresh and served hot, rather than cured and cold). I had braised oxtail which was good, but Anne had some monkfish stew (monkfish was very popular there, served almost everywhere) that was unreal. Again, a bottle of wine with lunch, and again we followed up lunch with a nap (real go-getters). We were both feeling pretty beat so we watched a movie our room. After showers, we headed out to a dinner place that we had noticed while walking around earlier in the day. They seemed to specialize in fire grilled meats, so this sounded very cool. Sadly it was pretty disappointing. We had manchego as a starter, which the bread was marginal, and sadly this was the best part of the meal. We had some rabbit and pork cheeks which weren't too great. The pork cheeks were so salty I could barely eat them, and the rabbit was tough. Undaunted we headed back to the hotel for a bottle of cava, and made (g-rated) movies with the flip cam.
The next day was again to be decided on the fly. We woke up to another excellent breakfast at Aiguaclara, lots of really good fresh fruit, bread, cheeses and sausages. We checked out and decided to head up to Cadaques, which looked like a cool small beach town, at the foot of the Pyrenees and near the French border. We booked a room online before we left Begur and headed up. On the way we found some ancient ruins (2nd century BC) that we decided to stop at. Really cool to see such an ancient city (very small), and there was even a cool statue that they had found. We pressed on and stopped off at a small bakery in a town that I don't remember the name of, for a snack. We arrived in Cadaques in the early afternoon, and checked in to the Hotel Rocamar. It was a cool older hotel whose heyday had probably passed a couple of decades ago. It was clean though, had an indoor pool which was a nice surprise, and overlooked the entire bay and town of Cadaques. Also, Cadaques was the home of Salvador Dali, or at least where he lived most of his life and where is home was. So we walked over and checked that out, it was cool but we didn't wait to take the tour since neither of us are really art buffs (or know anything about it at all would be more accurate). We went into the town on the way back and picked up a couple of swimsuits, fortunately mine wasn't a banana hammock, but Anne wasn't as lucky. Hers looked like the thinnest piece of a cotton band for the top and the bottoms weren't the best either. She hesitated but decided we would never see these people again anyway, so who cares. After a nice swim in the evening we went back to shower and get ready for the evening (no nap today). We started with some cocktails by the fireplace in our hotel which was really nice. Afterward we went out to a very local restaurant, buried in the intricate pathways of the city center, called The Mermaid. Again, more amazing seafood, so fresh, and this time two bottles of wine and desert. We stayed so late and had a wonderful time.
After a good nights sleep, we got up to find the best weather of our trip. It had been sunny everyday, but cool. Today, the 30th, was the warmest yet. Clear blue skies and around 70 degrees I went out in short sleeves. Without a doubt, Cadaques was the most beautiful place we stayed. The city is absolutely amazing, it feels like what my stereotype of a mediterranean city has always been. White buildings with helter skelter cobble stone streets, tiny pathways and with the ocean always as a backdrop. We spent the morning wandering around, eating a snack at a restaurant right in the beach where we sat outside. Then made our way back to our car, to head on to Girona. Girona, is another place where we planned our stay. This is the biggest city we had stayed in to that point by far. It has some really cool midieval architecture (spanish no doubt), and felt very old in the city center. We saw a really cool cathedral, dating back well over a thousand years. We stayed in a really cool hotel here too. The hotel had apartments you could stay in which we did (these were actually cheaper than a standard room), although we didn't utilize the kitchen really. It was nice though, and would have been ideal if you were staying for an extended period. We snacked at a crepe place where we each some really excellent savory crepes, which felt more like a dinner than a snack. Later we had churros and hot chocolate, a very traditional Spanish dish. These were awesome, deep fried dough with sugar on them, and a cup of hot chocolate to dip them in. Only, the chocolate is thick like hot pudding when you make it on the stove, and not super sweet. So good. We tried to meet up with a few of our friends who we were staying with the next few days in Barcelona, that were in Girona that night but were not able to find one another (made us wonder how we lived without cell phones). We were pretty beat and decided to not get too crazy that night (we are getting older for sure), and ended up having a quiet night, and catching up on some rest. The next morning we had a message at our hotel from our friends who had missed us the night before, and we met them that morning for some breakfast outside (nice again). They had rented a car as well, and were going to the same place as us in Barcelona. We caravaned down, dropped our cars back at the airport and took the bus into Barcelona city center to meet the rest of our group.
About dozen of us had rented a huge apartment in Barcelona, which was super cheap when divided up, for the few days. This is totally the way to go with a group, especially when phones aren't readily available. It eliminates the hassle of meeting up with people, it allows for some light cooking and drinking at a convenient place. Plus people can do their own thing if they want and know where to meet up later.
The rest of our group had just arrived that day, the 31st, so they were all pretty beat. But, to their credit, they powered through on limited sleep for a great night. Our first priority was to stock up on some provisions for the next few days. The ladies were charged with getting food, wine, and other essentials while myself and the boys and went to pick up beer and get a bite to eat. Predictably the place we stopped for a sandwich doubled as a bar (everywhere serves alchohol here, I mean everywhere), and so a few mugs of beer later we resumed our quest for, ahem, more beer. We didn't find a supermarket, so we literally cleaned a shop out of all of their beer, which the workers found to be comical. We met back up at the apartment with everyone and began getting ready for New Year's Eve in Barcelona. We played a few rounds of Apples to Apples (fun with the right group), had a few beers and passed out the party favors the ladies had purchased (noise makers, clown noses, masks etc.) Like Anne and I, our group was very casual, and not into over planning things. So we had no set plans for New Year's except find a bar where we could all fit comfortably and that wouldn't charge us through the nose for drinks. We walked for a few blocks, and I began to get the feeling we were going to wind up spending midnight on the street looking for a place, luckily we found a small pub which wasn't terribly busy and could accomodate all of us. Drinks were reasonable, and there was no cover which suited all of us just fine. As midnight approached champagned, or more likely cava, flowed and they had the Dick Clark equivalent up on the TV. In Spain the tradition is to eat grapes as mignight approaches, 12 to be exact and you're supposed to eat one every second for the last 12 seconds of the year. Anne and I both got them down, but the last 4 or 5 I was basically swallowing whole. Afterward, there was some dancing, more drinking, and I basically paid for the rest of my beers wagering on some games of foosball. We reconvened at the apartment, and drank until the wee hours, though none of us made it long enough for the American New Year's (6AM local time).
The next day we spent seeing various sights in Barcelona, including the famous works of Gaudi, notably the still-to-be-finished Sagrada de Familia. A massive cathedral that has been under construction for over 100 years and isn't scheduled to be finished for another 20 or something like that (still under active construction). These were the most impressive sights, we thought. We went with the group through the city center, and had some lunch with our friends. Notable dishes from this meal were cuddlefish with bacon and peppers, and some excellent Iberico ham. After a trip home and a nap, the group split up as some people went to see a Flamenco show (not us), and we went to dinner at a restuarant with some excellent seafood paella. We then went out to a bar called, oddly, Obama bar. Nothing inside appeared to have anything to do with our president, but the bar had clearly been recently renamed. The beers were cold and the group got into a wildly entertaining (and inappropriate) game of going around the circle and saying different euphemisms for male and female genitalia, this was hilarious.
The next day, Anne and I broke off from the group and went to Guella Park. An entire park designed by Gaudi. The city is wild over Gaudi I might add, and rightly so. His architecture is incredibly unique and interesting to see. The park is really cool, a great view of the city of Barcelona and the park itself is beautiful. We headed back to the city center afterward and went to the central food market, a must for Anne and I in any city. Such a cool way to see what the locals eat, and the places are always so interesting. We ate at a small restaurant in the market where I had a rare steak topped with a massive piece of griddled foie gras, absolutely delicious. Anne had some excellent meat balls in a savory sauce that was wonderful. We headed back to the apartment, and met up with the others.
For our meal on our last night we went out to white table cloth type place with the two of us and our good friend Anni (she had been before and recommended this place). This meal was again amazing (and surprisingly affordable given the atmosphere). We started with some flash fried baby calamari and a salmon carpaccio. The baby calamari were awesome, so tender and rather than sliced up they were whole and little bite sized pieces of heaven. For entrees we had veal, pork, and all sorts of delicious stuff which we shared with each other. It was truly an excellent meal. We met up with the others and ended up at a small bar called Dow Jones, which was very weird and had a picture of the New York Stock Exchange, only it had been photoshopped to look on fire. Slightly unnerved that maybe we weren't welcome there (although everyone was friendly and nothing else made us feel that way) we didn't stay terribly long. It was off to bed afterward, and on our way back home.
Aside from a really long line through security (thanks to the terror attempts the week before) the flight home was infinitely better than on the way there. No screaming baby's, and nice and quiet. Top to bottom, it was an excellent vacation. Going in the offseason made it extremely affordable, and much less hectic. I would recommend to spend it like we did, with the majority of our time exploring outside of Barcelona. Probably the best eating experience we had overall was our time in and around Begur, save the one meal, everything was outstanding. I apologize for this being so long, hopefully I didn't bore everyone to death. Until next time...

The first of fall

Fall is here and we scrambled to enjoy those last few warm weekends in August by getting out of the city during Nate’s time off. We went white water rafting in PA with Jackie and Rio and a few others. This was something that I’ve wanted to do for years and though Nate’s not exactly pulling canoes Jack Lalanne style, he cursed far less than I did and now ready for level 5. This was total awesomeness and a great way to end the season.

We also found this amazing farm in the middle of nowhere in Queens of all places, where you can feed farm animals, buy fresh produce and visit a maize maze. We happened upon it by taking the longest ride in public transportation history, but it was worth it to find the Queens County Fair that weekend. Fried food was consumed, old fashioned rides were rode, pig and wiener dog races were watched and an arm wrestling contest that brought out only the finest in the borough…and their groupies was possibly the best event ever.

Last weekend we spent some time with friends in Jersey to cap of horse racing racing season at Monmouth Park, eat some seafood and enjoy all that the Garden State has to offer.

And finally, we went to the new stadium for the first time last week to see the fancy new digs in our un-fancy seats. Royals beat the Yankees in the last game of the season. Go MO!

Fall is almost here.

It now feel like fall in nyc. What better way to spend our week than to:

1. Go bowing...had the best game of my life.
2. Try out best BBQ places in the city.
3. Make a meatloaf and shape it into a heart for those you love the most.

Boston & Cohasset

We had Sarah and Mike's wedding in Cohasset, Ma on Saturday, so we decided that we'd make a weekend of it and head to Boston on Friday afternoon. My cousin hooked us up with her employee discount at the Marriott at Copley Plaza, which was a sweet hotel and in close walking distance to a great place in the South End, Deluxe for diner and a few champagne of beers. The next morning we met a couple of friends for the Sam Adams tour and then on to Cohasset for the wedding. This was truly the quaintest towns and such fun wedding at The Red Lion Inn with lots of good friends and plenty of rug cutting. Congrats to Mike and Sarah!

Saratoga Springs

Nate and I would go to the horse races in Saratoga every weekend if we had the money to burn. During opening weekend, we took the train up (it's about 4 hours from the city) and I threw my hat on just in time for the first race. Nate didn't tell me, but he splurged on a suite, which had included our own table in air conditioned goodness and a rooftop deck to watch the horses up close and personal. It's not too much extra and the way to go. We had an awesome time betting (and mostly losing) on all of the races and later going to our favorite fried chicken place, Haties, for some insanely good eats.