New York, New York, What A Wonderful Town

Friends! How I missed you. As you may have suspected from my long absence, our trip to New York was fantastic. I don't think I realized until I sat down on the plane how badly I needed a vacation, and now I feel refreshed and ready to tackle life! (While simultaneously counting down the days til my NEXT vacation.)

NY with Ram is always an adventure. As I mentioned in this post, I was blown away by his sense of direction in the city - he knew where we were, where we were going, and how to get us there (by subway, I might add) the entire time, which is just unbelievable to me. So for a week straight I told him where I wanted to go and he schlepped me there! Pardon the onslaught of photos you're about to see, I had to capture it all :)

Before heading to the city, we stopped in Long Island for a few nights for Passover. It's always nice to see my fam - especially so I can do things like this with my little cousin Sam:

Posing in the background - and Charlie the dog wanted in on the shot too:

Quick diva contest with my grandmother at brunch at the country club the day after Passover. I clearly won...

While we were in the city, we stayed at my friend Carly's apartment in Murray Hill. When I originally told her we were coming to New York and wanted to see her, we were bummed because she had plans to be out of town all week. However, she generously offered us her apartment for our entire stay - how sweet is that!? (Thank you so much C.Bab - you saved us hundreds of dollars and Hotel Carly was just perfect!) To get to her apartment, of course, we had to take the train in... special thanks to my dear boyfriend who schlepped my ENORMOUS turquoise suitcase for me :)

Once we were in the city, the trip REALLY began. And by "the trip" I mean "the eating." I'm just going to come right out and say it - yes, we're observant Jews, but no, we didn't keep Passover this year. How could we, when we were traipsing around one of the world's greatest cities and delicious eateries were on every single block?!

How could I not visit EATALY, for instance? One of my favorite places on earth. Per our now annual tradition, we sat at the bar and had some wine and cheese before settling in for lunch, where we ordered tagliatelle with short rib bolognese - AKA one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten in my entire life.

I love everything about Eataly - the pasta counters, the meat trays, the cookbooks, the marketplace... it's amazing.

We also hit up the Strand Bookstore (18 miles of books!) that day - between us we came home with NINE books! We are the nerdiest bookworm couple. And that night we decided to walk around the city... guess where we ended up?

POMME FRITES. Holy shit. I took one bite and tweeted "I have waited my entire life for a place like this" and I'm not kidding. Pomme Frites is a true New York gem - a tiny little restaurant that specializes in one thing and one thing only: French fries. With any kind of dipping sauce your heart could desire. My heart personally desired parmesan peppercorn and truffle mayo, and I will never, ever be the same. I feel like in this picture I have a dazed smile on my face - food coma?

The following days passed so quickly - we visited the College Humor offices and Rami's best friend Amir (of Jake & Amir fame) could give us a tour. We ate soup dumplings from Joe's Shanghai and I taught Ram how to bite a tiny hole in the dumpling and suck all the juices out. We visited Bloomingdales and shopped in Soho and I picked up a gorgeous new J.Crew necklace. Rami got to go to his favorite comic book store, Midtown Comics, to pick up some new stuff. Bailey and JM met up with us one night for dinner at Locande Verde - delicious! (I highly recommend the lamb meatball sliders.) We tried - and failed - to score Book of Mormon tickets, but we had a fun time entering the lottery! We even took a PIZZA TOUR! More on that tomorrow - it was good enough to get its own post!

We ended our trip with a special night out - many of Rami's friends from Columbia still live in Manhattan, and his dear friend Katie organized a big group dinner on our last night! I had met most of them at Katie & Ben's wedding last September, and it was so great seeing everyone again - they are just the sweetest, most fun group.

We even got to celebrate Rami's birthday with them a week early! That boy could not have been happier.

We had the best time and I'm so sad our vacation is over! Between our last visit last fall and this trip, we talked about New York constantly - we even made a list of things we wanted to do and see while we were there and I'm happy to report we crossed most of them off. Looks like it's time to make a new list!