Big Apple, here we come!

Tonight Ashley, Ashley and I leave for New York. That wasn’t a typo, I just have  lot of friends who were born in the mid-eighties. For clarification, we’ll call the blonde one AshCap.

The three of us wanted one last big girl’s weekend before Ash Cap heads off to Africa to live in a Tanzanian orphanage for six months.  Insert sad face here.

While we are there, they’ll see The Lion King on Broadway (been there, done that) and Ground Zero (two big holes in the ground). While they do that, I’m going to hang out with a hilarious Greek man in Long Island. Sometimes I call him “Dad”.

This is the man I have to thank for my deadpan humor and my non-white-girl butt. I haven’t seen him in two years since my epic New England Road Trip with two men named Thiago and Gabe, but sometimes he texts me encouraging memes like this:

Thanks, Dad.

Friday and Saturday we have no concrete plans, but some things we’d like to do are: walk through Central Park, grab a New York slice at Sbarro, go out dancing somewhere without paying a thirty dollar cover,  and maybe hit the Natural History Museum or buy knock-offs in China Town. We may go to Coney Island to eat hot dogs, ride roller coasters, and  dodge marriage proposals from 20-year old amorous Jersey Shore Guidos. I personally would love to rub elbows with hipsters at a Farmer’s Market in Brooklyn. I’ve never been to Brooklyn but I just know I would love it.

I’m excited to see my New York family, eat whatever I want (vacation calories don’t count) and take in all the sights, sounds, and smells of the most bustling, diverse, crazy city on the East Coast. It won’t be relaxing. Catching trains and navigating around a huge, unfamiliar city where rail drinks cost 12 dollars makes me slightly anxious. There are just so many people!

It will be great, though, to squeeze in a few full days with these sweet friends and to get out of the daily grind together. Plus, I already turned down accompanying them to the Grand Canyon in October (hiking, camping, and sweating in a big hole in the South West. Thanks but no thanks). Wish us luck and light traffic!

Fuggedaboudit.

Ang