Why, do you ask?
My mother came to visit me this past weekend. And she has run me straight into the ground.
Only kidding, of course :). I am tired, and I am sore from walking so much, but I would not have traded one single moment of this weekend for extra sleep. (Plus, walking is good for you. I haven't been to the gym in three days, and I feel better than ever).
My mom and I went on quite a few adventures over the span of two and half days, and I had such a wonderful time with her. She's the best.
FRIDAY
At around 7 a.m., I got the phone call that confirmed my mom had landed at the LaGuardia Airport! I hopped in the shower, and thirty minutes later, she was standing in our lobby. Since she's the first visitor I've had, I was more than excited to give her a little tour of our world here in Brooklyn Heights. She'd barely taken a step into the building before I'd whisked her bags away and told her to get ready for breakfast. (Now that I'm writing this, maybe I ran her into the ground haha).
After grabbing some quick coffee at Tazza (because my mom demanded she needed coffee before she could do anything), I gave her a tour of the Hotel St. George. Then, Allison, my mom, and I all walked down to the Iris Cafe (of course) for breakfast. Mom and I split the avocado toast with two soft eggs... which was amazingggggg. (You're going to find that a lot of the things in this post are about food. I'm a foodie, but my mom is too. Put the two of us in the same city, and we're unstoppable).
Then, we sauntered down to the promenade so that she could take in the beautiful view...
Ehh.. let's try again...
I let her relax a bit after that. I mean, she had been up since about 3 a.m.... I guess she needed it.
After she rested for about an hour, it was time to get a move on. We decided to walk all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge.. and keep walking... to find my internship just off of Wall Street. It was a success :). Since my internship is located right down by the 9/11 Memorial, we spontaneously decided to get tickets for that for later in the day as well.
Then, my favorite part of the day. Lunch. We hopped on the subway to go to...
LITTLE ITALY.
I hate that I didn't get a picture of it, but there was a street festival going on while we were there.. it was a little insane. There were amusement park rides and carnival games and booths with unlimited refills of pina coladas all the way up and down Mulberry Street. It was difficult, but we somehow found a place that was a little out of the fray called Amici II.
And we had the most delicious penne vodka lunch with salad, bread, and their house wine. After all of the walking, the carbs were good. Our plates were completely clean.
After deciding we could no longer stand the hoards of people and loud rap/carnival music that was engulfing Little Italy, we hopped on the train to head back to the 9/11 Memorial Site. So glad she was able to see that while she was here.
Our evening ended with... can you guess?? More food. (I promise we spaced our meals out a bit).
I took her to Fatoosh to get some good ole New York falafel. We got it to go and sat down by the promenade to enjoy the beautiful view at night. I think I've got her hooked on the promenade. And falafel.
That was it! Day one: complete.
SATURDAY
Mom surprised me by going to get coffee for us and having it ready for me when I woke up. It was then and there that I decided she couldn't leave.
Because we'd already walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, I decided we should go down to the Brooklyn Bridge Park and explore. (The photo up at the top is from that morning). We ended up walking pretty much the entire perimeter of Brooklyn Heights as well.. and stumbled across a wonderful Farmers Market just down the street in the process!
It's literally 3 blocks from my front door and it goes on EVERY Saturday. Plus, they have the most delicious peaches. I will definitely be back.
Then, it was off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art!
But before, we decided to make a quick, little stop about a half mile from the museum...
... to visit the building that my Grammy lived in when she worked in New York City in the 1950s. It was absolutely beautiful.
And we got a photo of us standing in front of it :).
Grammy- the building next door is for sale if you ever decide you want to move back to this street!
It's only $24.5 million.
On the way to the Met, we ran into a German-American festival. Naturally.
Then, finally, we made it to our destination.
And it was so beautiful.
And so large.
If you tried looking at every piece of art in this museum, I think you could be there for days. Maybe weeks. We were there for about 3 hours and only covered about a fourth of the whole building. It was pretty amazing to see the famous works of Picasso and Monet (my favorite) and van Gogh in the flesh. They have such an amazing and extensive collection! So crazy.
Plus, the Met has a beautiful rooftop view.
Since the Met sits right on the corner of Central Park, we decided to take a little stroll through there. On the way, we grabbed coffee... I think all of the artwork did something to our brains...
It was (once again) an absolutely beautiful day. Perfect for the park.
Just because we could, we decided to get a couple glasses of wine and split a pretzel while we people-watched.
Then, we hopped on the subway to head back to Brooklyn Heights to get rejuvenated before we went on with the rest of the evening.
We decided to have dinner in the East Village at a little French bistro called Jule's.
They supposedly have live jazz every night of the week (although it was a bit more like blues)... Regardless, it was wonderful, and we had a perfect spot right outside (where we could people-watch) and still listen to the great music.
We each had a delicious house salad (with goat cheese croutons), bread, and we split the flank steak dinner with mushroom cream risotto. It was so delectable, I can't even put it into words.
To wrap up our wonderful evening, I decided we should walk down the street to Swift to grab a couple of Irish coffee dessert drinks (and the bartender just so happened to be a real Irishman). It was a perfect ending to a perfect day. It was a long day, though. As soon as we got back to the room, we passed out.
SUNDAY
We woke up and grabbed a delicious breakfast from the little diner across the street (Clark's).
Then, we made our way over to Williamsburg so that I could introduce her to the awesomeness that is the Brooklyn Flea Market.
This was our view while we sifted through various vintage clothing items and antiques:
We stayed for a couple of hours and then hopped back over to Brooklyn Heights. She had to leave to catch her flight at 4 p.m., so we only had a couple of hours...
And because every great trip starts with food and ends with food, we had to at least grab lunch before she went back to Charlotte. And because I live in Brooklyn and had yet to eat pizza (I know, crazy right?), we decided to stand in line at the famous Grimaldi's down by the Brooklyn Bridge park to get some.
From start to finish, we waited for probably about an hour. But it ended up working out great, because we were actually hungry by the time the pizza was ready. Now I can say I've eaten at Grimaldi's. Been there, done that. It was good, but I don't know if it was an hour wait good.
There's our pizza.. the bag offered a nice protection from the pigeons while we ate. We decided to take it down to the Brooklyn Bridge park and sit down by the water... such a beautiful view.
...And we're not really sure what was going on, but there was an entire bridal party down by the park...
... and they were filming the couple with a gigantic boom camera. Mom and I think that it was for some TLC show or something like that... Although, it could be that they just wanted to go all out with the videography. (I think the first guess is more exciting, though. We'll just stick to that). What a great way to end her time here. Only in New York.
And then my mom left :(. And it was back to reality for me... as in, back to a pile of homework. All is well, though. It was such a wonderful weekend! Not only was it great to see my mom, but we explored the city together, and she is a great companion (mostly because she likes food as much as I do). I have many more visitors coming in the next couple of months, but I'm so glad she could be the first!
Now, time for my internship! I hope everyone has a wonderful start to the week.
<3
Nat
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