Current mood:	cold
Entry tags:	new york

New York October 2007
My friend, Missy, invited me to accompany her in New York to stay at her cousin's house in Brooklyn. I decided to go because it's been a while since my first visit in the Big Apple. Mostly, we spent a lot of time with her relatives. Her cousin, Jenna, and her husband, Jhon, were awesome.

On our first night, we went to an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. The restaurant's manager took an interest in our table and gave us free wine (I think each of us had at least one bottle of wine each........), free appetizers and desserts. Holy crap. They had the best pumpkin cheesecake in the world. It was AMAZING. *____*

Bryant Park

Our second day, Friday, turned out to be a very full day. We woke up and got ready to hop on a bus and spend the day and night in Manhattan. First, I went to Hachette Book Group USA's office to meet up with the people of Yen Press. Yen Press' founder took me out for lunch and a few drinks. After lunch, he decided he wanted to go to karaoke and more drinks that night. He sent me off and went back to work, while Missy and I went shopping in SoHo for a little bit. I bought a couple of cute dresses and some pieces from Uniclo... they had the best skinny jeans ever!

Around 6pm, we met up at a karaoke box called Duet 35. Unlike the karaoke boxes in California... this one serves alcohol and food like in Japan! DUDE! Why is the east coast way better than the west coast?!?! Missy was with me, and so was my friend Branden. Kurt and Tanya from Yen press were there and a couple of new people showed up later, and so did my friend, Sean. It was really fun and Kurt was generous enough to pay for the whole thing~ Free things adds to the fun XD XD XD YEN PRESS IS AWESOME!

After karaoke, Missy, Branden, Sean and I ran off to find Serendipity to meet with Missy's friend, Oscar. After about a 45 minute wait, we finally got seated and had some crazy frozen hot chocolate-- I know. The concept confused me too. But all that really mattered was that... it was quite tasty.


Serendipity's frozen hot chocolate

Oh, and the main reason Missy wanted to go to this restaurant was because it was central to that John Cusack movie... they had good clam chowder soup at least.

We staggered back home that night and woke up the next morning to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After struggling with public transportation (aka: buses not showing up), we made it to the museum later than we planned (which didn't leave us much room to do anything else afterwards :( ). We did have hot dogs at the steps of the museum so we could have some energy-- that was the only morning we didn't have bagels. Again-- why do the east coast have BETTER bagels with cream cheese than the west coast?? L.A. sucks!!!


art for the sake of art? to be or not to be??

After the whole bus incident and no breakfast we got to the city feeling hungry. The hot dogs helped bring our spirits back up and we enjoyed ourselves some art for the rest of the afternoon. We couldn't hang out in the city that night because Missy's grandparents wanted to take us out for dinner back in Brooklyn. We went to the dinner; went back to Jenna's house and had some wine... then went to pick up some dark and white cookies, chocolate cake and Italian ice... then we settled down in the living room and watched Will Ferrel's Stranger than Fiction until we were tired enough to go to bed. Though we spent a couple of hours gossipping in the bedroom, of course.

The last day, we saw more of Missy's relatives and did some shopping in Brooklyn until we got picked up to go to the airport to catch our 6pm flight.

I should mention that when Missy and I boarded our plane, Will Ferrell was sitting in the executive business class. Missy and I were amused because we were watching his movie the night before... and suddenly, there he was. We both looked at each other and went "OMG It's Will Ferrell LOL" XD I wished that happened every time I watched a movie and got on a plane.

The rest of the photos are in my flickr account!
http://flickr.com/photos/oosakinana/sets/72157602438551683/