Best of 2009 Blog Challenge: Trip
I’m stretching my bloggin’ wings a tiny bit by signing up for Gwen Bell’s [@gwenbell] The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. You should too!
Best Trip 2009: Adventures in wine, cheese, and NYC
I didn’t get to travel as much as I normally do during 2009 (thank you crap economy) but I did manage to hop on a train from Burlington, VT down to New York City for a great little weekend with my friend Mary from MA. After ten hours on the the rails, Mary and I wasted no time in doing what NYC tourists do – get to the top of the Empire State building. 
We checked into our hotel (the Hampton Inn – a few blocks from Empire, and made a beeline for the skyscraper. It was about 8pm and the city was awash in amber lights.
With my traveling mascot and companion, Walter (a nerf-y wart hog that has traveled across the country with me) in a backpack, we arrived at the top of the building amid dozens of other tourists – a slow night I’m sure. What a view. I felt like I was smack in the opening credits of Law & Order.
After we’d had our fill and snapped about a million pics that would later turn out to be mostly psychedelic light smears of an orange tint, we headed on back toward the hotel to find a couple of night-caps to close the day.
A couple of doors down from the Hampton is a hotel called Hotel Metro. WHAT A FIND. Get this: the hotel has an open invitation to visit the lounge on the penthouse level. The lounge is open air and is parked right at the foot of the looming Empire State building. What a sight at night! Needless to say we closed the bar down and took pics of some German college kids whose camera batteries had died. Facebook’d them the next morning. I love social media.
The next day we nursed our wine brains and hopped onto the subway to Murrays Cheese Shop on Bleeker Street [map]. I could eat cheese for days on end and that was one of our must-go stops while in town. We loaded up with about 20 lbs of cheese each, before it occurred to us that we’d be hauling it around until we got back to the hotel. Damn.
After experiencing the spectacle that is Canal Street, hair of the dog and pasta on some patio in Little Italy, we cabbed it back to our neighborhood and called it a day. We’d round out our trip by taking Walter to the Met and eating a ubiquitous hot dog on the steps.
It was a brief but very fun little trip to one of the greatest cities in the world. Can’t wait to go back!
