Another NYC reunion!

There is nothing quite like a bunch of girls reuniting to make your stomach hurt from laughter. This weekend my abs got the best workout they have had in a while when I headed to NYC to meet up with the Perth gals for a weekend reunion.

The last couple of weeks have been full with man related activities while Bas & Kamiel have been visiting. This included lots of beer drinking and eating steaks as big as my head. It was lovely and Bas & Kamiel are fantastic house guests but I am a girls girl at heart so a weekend away with the girls while the men manned it up in Algonquin Provincial Park was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Friday morning I was up at 4am with a pounding headache which I blame entirely on Bas & Kamiel & their relaxed holiday attitude towards reasonable bed time hours. I made my flight to NYC with a brief transfer in Toronto where I met up with Mel! Let the laughter begin. The flight to NYC was spent catching up and gossiping and sharing wedding planning stories … we’re both on the same page with this so that was a good thing. Upon arrival in NYC we realized that neither of us had a map. Typical! Mel at least had had the good sense to print out the address of our apartment (this brings me back to our Euro travelling days … Mel was always more organized. I will never catch up.) … we caught the train downtown and managed to negotiate our way to our apartment. The beauty of NYC is that even when you are map-less it is pretty close to impossible to get lost.

Upon arrival at the apartment we met up with the gals, sang a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Smelaroo and had some good chats before hitting the streets of NYC to grab food and begin the shopping. Now I have never been a good shopped. I don’t enjoy it. In fact, more than that, I dislike it. True story. It makes me question whether the stories my sister told me as a child re me being adopted are actually true.

Nevertheless, despite my severe dislike of shopping, there is something about hitting the stores in NYC with 6 girls that is a bit … well, contagious! Within hours we all found ourselves something we loved and simply HAD to purchase. It could also be the fact that we had found a cinema where tickets for Sex & the City were NOT completely sold out so we jumped on this opportunity to see the ultimate chick flick in NYC! I now own a dress that I am unsure if I will ever wear due to its flamboyant style. What can I say? I got carried away with the NYC fashions … but I life in Ottawa. Uh-oh.

Despite the frivolous spending (or perhaps because of it) we had a fantastic afternoon before heading back to the apartment to get ready for dinner. By this stage Inna had left us for greener pastures only to return shortly afterwards with her pal. This meant that 6 girls were then getting ready in 2 bedrooms of the apartment and unable to wander freely from room to room to get ready. Needless to say it was a challenge! But we made it and, all dolled up, we hit the streets to head out to dinner. Mexican was the order of the night for no reason other than we wanted margarita’s!! Mission accomplished we enjoyed a fantastic meal and some good laughs before heading out to dance.

We spent Friday evening on a roof top bar on Fifth Avenue and it was more than a little bit glamorous. Except when Em insulted our table neighbors by making racist comments. JOKING! Only a little bit actually. So Em was sitting at the end of our group and next door was a table of African American men. Em, as is her natural charm, struck up a conversation with them. Now there is some confusion re what the opening lines of this conversation were but all that we heard was the biggest of the men belly laughing and shouting … according to him Em’s opening line had been ‘You’re black, you must play basketball!’ Em denies this 150%. I am not sure what her story is re what she said but this dude thought she was hilarious and an instant friendship was struck. ‘Bubba’ as Em then dubbed him (*cringe*) seemed to find Em positively refreshing! Classic.

We spent the night enjoying a few drinks and incorporated a bit of groove shaking before the early morning start caught up on us and it was home time. Or was it? A group of Aussie girls walking home in NYC is obviously a recipe for disaster. We managed to get ourselves well and truly lost which is actually really hard to do in NYC! But we did it. After much aimless wandering we eventually made our way home and crashed.

The next morning there were stories shared about the previous night (lead largely by Inna who is the team leader for scandal) … before getting ready for our day’s excursion to the YANKEES!!

Yankee Stadium – The Yankees versus the Cleveland Indians! Isn’t it intriguing that a group of 6 girls raised in Perth, WA  who know nothing about baseball & were raised on AFL and cricket were so excited to see the Yankees? We are certainly products of consumerism. Yankee Stadium is a pretty cool place. The atmosphere is exactly what you would expect it to be and we spent the next few hours eating hotdogs, onion rings, popcorn and drinking beers in the 30+ degree sun. It. Was. Heavenly.

The game however was not very exciting. Sorry America but baseball just isn’t the sport for me! However, just like cricket, it is a great sport for relaxing and chatting and enjoying yourself in the sunshine. Oh and there was one exciting part of the game when the pitcher got hit square in the face with a ball … ouch! I’ll be honest with you … that’s probably the only time I paid attention to the game. Oh AND when the little cleaning men game out to rake the dirt (is that what they were doing? I have no idea actually) but they sang and danced to YMCA at the same time and it was awesome!!

We left the game before it finished (don’t judge us, lots of American’s did the same thing) and headed to Central Park to relax in the sun. Oh New York! I could stay forever. True story.

Rays soaked up and naps in the sun enjoyed we headed for home to get ready for dinner. At some point during the day an executive decision had been made that we neeeeeeded Italian food. So after dolling ourselves up we headed out to SoHo for a bite to eat in Little Italy. People bag on Little Italy for being touristic. I love it there. Great atmosphere, heaps of great restaurants AND an awesome street market with games that let you win stuffed toys! (Joepinator’s heaven) We found a fantastic garden spot for dinner and proceeded to enjoy a few bottles of wine and a whole lot of food. A whole lot. We were also easily the loudest table in the restaurant with our loud stories and belly laughs. I do believe there were tearful moments at the table due to excessive laughing. I certainly had a few big belly laughs myself!

After pigging out and spending a loooong time at our table chatting we moseyed on through Little Italy. I hit up one of the games places and managed to win Joepinator a toy. Well. I didn’t actually win it. The dude was a total scam artist and I am not very good and realizing when I am being scammed but thankfully Em was with me and she realized it was a scam and we got a bear for free. Phew!!

Having over eaten and soaked up enough atmosphere for one day we called it a night and headed back to the apartment to chill out J

Sunday was the last day for Mel & I (the other gals had a few more days to enjoy) and it was spent … shopping!! After a very successful few hours I the stores it was sadly time to call it a day. Mel & I grabbed our bags and headed for home late Sunday afternoon in time for work on Monday.

It was, yet again, a fantastic NYC weekend! Too many laughs most of which have been censored from this blog but will be remembered for some time to come! Looking forward to the next reunion which is most likely to be in Perth – hometown!