For this trip I rode Business Class and First Class because my dad had enough mileage for me to do so, so it only cost $55 for me (which was tax/fees). I had lots of leg room and was able to check in a suitcase, which is nice because I have tons of makeup and needed to pack my train case!
My menu for my flight! Everything was really yummy! I got the chicken for my main course and it was cooked wonderfully.
My flight into JFK was mostly painless, but getting into JFK was a nightmare! My flight was scheduled to arrive an hour ahead of schedule, but of course JFK had no room for us so we were basically stuck in the air for 2 hours. Not only that, when we finally landed we were stuck on the runway for about half an hour before they had a gate open for us. To add insult to injury, when we finally got to the gate the jetway (the walkway from the plane into the airport) BROKE! Which added an extra 30-45 minutes to our time being stuck in the plane. It was a nightmare and finally made my way out about an hour and a half after scheduled arrival time.
My friends Jason and Steve were there waiting for me, so we drove back to Jason's house in Brooklyn and managed to get lost a bunch of times. We had 3 hours to spare before my boyfriend was to arrive in JFK and had to get back to wait for Alex to arrive at Jason's house. When Alex finally arrived (he is a silly Canadian that didn't know how what train to take, so he came late-ish) we went out to find places to eat. Steve originally wanted to take us to Spumoni Gardens but we couldn't due to Alex coming in late :( So we ate at a crappy Chinese take-out place by Jason's house. Afterwards we went to pick up Tony at the airport and went out for some midnight munchies~
The next day (Saturday) we went out everywhere in the city, since Alex only could stay for the weekend. That meant crunch time!
We went out to a famous pizzeria by Jason's house, Di Fara Pizza. Last year we tried to go to this place 3-4x to no avail, since they were either closed or they ran out of pies. We got lucky this time and managed to snag one!
Afterwards we headed out to the city to go shopping! Mainly for Alex and Jason, since they wanted to go shopping at TopShop and Uniqlo.
Tony and I on the train ♥
A picture that Tony got of me dancing ParaPara. I didn't want my purse on the dirty sidewalk!
For dinner we went to eat on St. Marks street, since we wanted to eat at Kenka. That didn't work out since it was a Saturday night with a 45 minute-1 hour wait! We decided on Baoguette Cafe instead, which initially I was protesting because the Vietnamese inside of me was disgusted at the expensive prices. But it's NYC, so I can't really complain since the rent is as high as the quality of their ingredients. Everyone mostly got banh mi sandwiches, but it was really hot outside and I knew that I had to get bu'n instead. It was pretty good but I'm pretty biased and think that my mom's is best! Well, second best because the best is in the little town in Vietnam where the dish was created (which I got to have, sooo yummy).
We walked to Union Square and decided to hang out around there and go to Whole Foods to use the restroom. My flip flops also proceeded to break, so I went to Forever 21 to see if they had the same ones and they had absolutely no sandals in the store! In the middle of summer, how stupid can you get not to carry any?! Luckily American Eagle Outfitters was close by and since they're from California I was 100% sure they had flip flops. And they did!
Jason was really intent on dancing ParaPara in Union Square, so we did a little bit of dancing.
A creepy picture of me dancing since I look like a ghost!
We got tired of doing it really quickly so Jason wanted to take us to a bar. So we walked to The Boiler Room, which is the bar he has been frequenting. It's a gay bar that's really chill compared to the ones I go to back in WeHo, but unfortunately we had to hide my boyfriend in the corner the whole night. It didn't help he was wearing the toddland montana tee, which has a huge rainbow on it! There was a music player there as well, so we put some Kylie Minogue and Madonna on the playlist with a couple of other random songs. We had to leave at 2-3am since Steve had to go to work the next morning~
The next day (Sunday) we went to Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Alexander McQueen exhibit. Jason recently became a member of the museum, so he was able to get all of us a front of the line pass. Which was good because it was the last week of the exhibit and had a 2-3 hour wait in line... no thank you. It was probably the first time I really felt claustrophobic in any place! I was getting really angry because there was too many people and I rushed myself through the exhibit just to get away from the crowds ;_; It was a shame because there was a lot of beautiful pieces in what was being shown off.
We decided on eating dinner in East Village at Gemma at The Bowery Hotel. As usual, we went there on the recommendation of Jason! Online the restaurant has mixed reviews, but when we went we had pretty good service. The only thing that was kind of questionable was the price of my Bellini, which was $12.
Monday was the last full day Alex was going to be in town, so Alex and Jason decided to film ParaPara videos at Jason's apartment (we've stayed at his family's house for the stay). Originally we tried to go to Next Level Arcade for Tony, since he wanted to play Street Fighter and Jason was curious as well. To our luck we ended up going on the only day they decided to close! So we took the bus back to Jason's apartment and ordered some yummy Chinese food for delivery.
A view of the street from the roof of Jason's apartment complex.
The backdrop for the video.
Behind the scenes of the guys filming! I was the director.
Tuesday we dropped off Alex at the bus and met up with our friend Kelly, who might just be the new DiscoNRG "intern" lol
We went to Kinokuniya, where I picked up Edge Style and Ranzuki. They also had a cafe/bakery in there, which they definitely do not have over by where I live! I had a disappointing bowl of gyuudon that was really dry. I'm more of a fan of the wetter versions like Yoshinoya.
Some of the baked goods they had at Kinokuniya.
The food court that Crepe Monster is in was very modern and clean, and had different levels for different types of food. I originally wasn't going to get a crepe since I was still full from Kinokuniya but decided to get one in the end because they ended up being pretty small.
After eating our crepes. I love how my lashes look in this picture!
Here's a funny picture of me.
We finally went down to Chinatown to get circle lenses! I believe there was 3 stores that carried them inside Elizabeth Center, mostly GEO lenses. Jason decided to buy this pair of contacts from Barbie eye while I got GEO Honey Wing, since I fell in love with them seeing Jelly's Remi Sakamoto wearing them in her Diamond Beauty ads. One of the stores with circle lenses was closed that day, so we wanted to come back.
Kelly had to leave us to get the train back to CT afterwards. We decided to try to go back to Kenka and finally made it in this time! We ate a lot of yummy food and got cotton candy to finish off the meal :)
Wednesday was Tony and I's last full day in NY so we decided to go to Book Off and do a few other things.
Book Off had some CDs we wanted so we bought them. They also had almost all of 2011's issues of Men's Knuckle as well, which is hard to find here in the US. I called my ParaPara partner Jim/ZYX up and got him the January, February, March, May, June and August issues.
We went to Nintendo World as well, where I got gifts for friends there.
I got this Mijumaru for myself, though! I refuse to acknowledge his English name.
We headed back to Chinatown for Elizabeth Center, to go to the circle lens store that was closed the day before. It was good we headed back, because that store actually carried prescription strengths! I picked up GEO World Series Gray and Ash Wing for Jim and Steve got Nudy Blue. I wanted to get prescription lenses but unfortunately the store owner had a policy where you had to buy the pair in the same strength (ie -2.25 and -2.25) without mixing and matching. That's no good for me since my eyes are different!
We went to Cha Chan Tang to eat, since I wanted to go to a HK Style cafe. It's new with modern decor and affordable prices.
Tony's best impression of Tsubasa.
While the food and drinks at this restaurant was really good, the service really sucked! It took forever for someone to take our order and they got my food order wrong, and the server tried to blame it on me! I pretty much yelled at him since it was obviously his fault he got it wrong, and it took probably 30 minutes for them to redo my food.
Thursday we had to go back home, and Tony's flight was 4 hours before mine ;_; After we dropped him off we realized that it would be too costly for us to go back into the city, so we actually waited at the airport the rest of the extra time. We did pretty much nothing for an hour (since I got there too early to check-in), and Jason and Steve left me when it was time to go.
To make use of my time, I decided to go into the First Class lounge. They had a lot of snacks, drinks and finger food to munch on while I got to use free internet! I decided on the healthy route for the most part and mostly munched on fruits and nuts.
My set up at one of the tables inside the first class lounge!
All of your food photos make me feel as if i got to eat these meals vicariously - especially that ravioli
ReplyDeleteLet's Di Fara soon *_*
Yummy fooooood.
ReplyDeleteLooks like you had a good time!
LOL! That pic of Jason and I at Cowboy is hilarious. Jason'sall intense and I'm all "Yeaaaaaaaahhhhh boiiiiiiiii!" 8D
ReplyDelete