The Best is Yet to Come: I Heart NYC...

Because that is where Becky & Jordan live! This past weekend Val and I drove to NJ and hopped on a NJ Transit train to spend the weekend with Becky & Jordan. From the start, this trip was a bit of a debacle. Val and I both work downtown (in Baltimore), so we decided that I’d pick her up and we’d drive up to NJ together. I picked her up around 5, and we attempted to leave the city and get on 95. Traffic was a nightmare. What should have taken about 15-20 minutes to get through Baltimore ended up taking about 45 minutes. All because no one knows how to drive in this ~~freaking~~ wonderful city. We finally got onto 95 and stopped to pick up a quick dinner (Chick-fil-A, Yum!). We got back on 95, and it started to rain and about 20 minutes into the drive, my phone rings. Of course, I am expecting it to be Becky asking where we were and when we thought we’d get to NYC. No such luck… It was a slightly hysterical Ryan calling to tell me that our basement flooded again. Yes, I said again. You see, while we were on our honeymoon, our sump pump failed and the basement flooded. Thankfully, my sister was taking good care of our house while we were gone, and she and my brother-in-law dealt with it. Dealing with it meant having to rip up perfectly good carpet that was soaked by the water overflowing from the sump pump. We were fortunate enough that not much else was really damaged, and it was kind of a blessing in disguise because we were able to re-do the basement the way we wanted including painting it a new color without having to worry about dripping paint on the carpet. About a month ago, we finished re-doing the basement, and we were really happy about it so to hear that the basement was flooding again on Friday was a little devastating. Probably more for Ryan than me since he was there seeing it firsthand, but still depressing. Once I talked to Ryan, I called my dad to ask if he’d go and help Ryan with whatever he needed to do to stop the water. My dad dropped everything he was doing and headed over to our house – Thanks, Dad!! We are so lucky that he is always there for us and is so helpful! Val quickly texted Becky to ask her to have the drinks ready when we got there – what a good friend for knowing just what I needed! So, you’d think that this story gets boring now, but no, it gets better. We had planned on taking the 8:35 train into the city and arrived at the train station at 8:20 with what we thought was plenty of time to spare. We should have known better when we saw a train departing the station for NYC at 8:25. (It was the train before ours and it was running a little late). We bought our tickets and hung out for a little while thinking that our 8:35 train would be arriving shortly. 8:35 came and went and no train. Finally, I looked on my blackberry to try to figure out what was going on and it said that there was a trespasser fatality at the Princeton Junction station (the station right after ours) and that the trains were running 15-20 minutes late. No big deal, we thought. 15-20 minutes came and went. After waiting for a while, they announced that our train would be arriving shortly and to begin walking to the end of the platform to board. As we were doing this, we talked with a few of the girls getting on our train and they said that there had been a suicide at the Princeton Junction station and that this actually happens quite often. How sad. We finally boarded the train at 9:30 and all was well (well, kind of). Both Val & I love to read, so we pulled out our books and started reading on the train which seemed to be barely moving. The ride to Penn Station was supposed to take about an hour and 20 minutes or so. By 11:00, we were still not there yet. In fact, we were stopped in Secaucus. A train in front of us had broken down and we had the red light, and there were 3 trains in front of us that were waiting for a green light first. Around 11:20, we finally got the green signal and made it into Penn Station around 11:30. What a trip! Once we arrived in NYC, we hailed a cab to Becky & Jordan’s apartment. The drinks were cold, and the company was even better. We stayed up until 1:30am looking at the wedding album and watching the raw footage of the wedding dvd. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time.

Saturday, Becky & Jordan cooked us yummy pancakes for breakfast and then we headed to Central Park for a picnic and wine. The weather was beautiful – we couldn’t have asked for a better day. We left the park in the afternoon and headed to my favorite bar, Third and Long which had $2 beers from 4-8pm. Perfect timing. Since Third and Long doesn't serve food, we had a pizza delivered to the bar (only in NYC!) and had dinner there. After a long day of drinking, we headed back to Becky & Jordan's apartment to change and go back out to a bar that was playing 80s music videos. Slight snag in the plans... Becky & Jordan decided to take a 30-minute nap at 8:30pm. Val & I knew that there was no way we'd be going back out, so we just hung out with the cats for a bit, and we fell asleep around 9:30pm since Becky & Jordan were still "napping". Around 11:45, Becky woke up and decided that it was time to go out, but she was out of luck. Val and I had retired the party pants for the day. Sorry, Becky! The next day, we went to brunch at Regional, and it was amazing. The food was great, and we even got to sit in a window seat and people-watch while we ate. After brunch, it was time for us to say goodbye, and Val and I headed home, this time without any major issues. We did stop for a quick caffeine break in NJ at a Dunkin' Donuts and found that it was a Dunkin' Donuts in a huge liquor store. So strange... Since no post is complete without some pictures, I have included a few below.

Val and I waiting at the train station for our train to arrive.

Val and I on the train after we found out that our train was stopped because of the broken down train ahead of us. Notice that we are still smiling...