Summa, Summa, Summatime!

Summer has finally graced me with its lovely presence, and I couldn't be more happy to welcome it back with open arms! 

This summer started off with a bang with my first trip to New York City.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first NYC experience. We went with Andy's parents, and they were so sweet to have put a lot of thought into each day's itinerary. I took so many pictures, but I'll try not to bore you with all of the the standard NY pics, and in attempts to keep this post at a reasonable length, I'll show you my favorite part of the trip...the food we ate! Are you surprised?

We arrived around lunchtime on Friday, and after checking into the hotel, we were off to lunch at the famous Carnegie Deli. The sandwiches are ridiculously enormous so we ordered 2 to split between the four of us. We ordered the hot pastrami sandwich.

Take a look at this literal mountain of meat.

It was mouthwateringly good. Especially with their house-made mustard. 

And, what do you know, Andy's doppleganger was staring down at our table! (Although I believe Andy looks more like John Krasinski).

It's Cameron from Ferris Bueller!

And, Seinfeld reference here, Andy had to order a black and white cookie. He ate it before I could take a picture!

being silly

Per my aunt's recommendation, we toured around the market of Eataly. It was pretty amazing. It's basically a market with all fresh foods directly shipped from Italy. If I lived in the city, I would be there everyday for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

My, I love pasta.

 Making the pasta on-site.

Okay. Who cut the cheese?

That's a lotta cheese.

We stopped for coffee at a coffee shop in SOHO (I forgot the name of it). This is where I had the best iced coffee of my life, the Iced Cafe. It had two scoops of ice cream in it. How could you go wrong?

Then it was off to the East Village for our walking food tour. I'll try to keep this brief, so I will only show you my favorite parts of the tour. It seriously was one of the best parts of the trip. I would recommend it!

Stop 1 on the tour: Egg Cream

Who would have though that a place called "Gem Spa" would have such yummy egg creams? By the way, an egg cream is simply chocolate syrup and soda water. No eggs whatsoever. And it was surprisingly light and refreshing.

Stop 3: Veselka Coffee Shop for their famous Borscht. 

According to our tour guide, there are Ukrainian women in the kitchen making this stuff all day, everyday. For those of you who are asking what Borsht is, it's a beet soup of Ukrainian decent. It can be served hot or chilled. Our's was hot and was flavored with pork. I kid you not, this was the best thing I ate all weekend. It was amazing. Even Andy liked it, and he is hard to please!

 Looks pretty revolting, huh? Looks can be deceiving!

Stop 4: Papaya Dog

And, while the hotdog was absolutely perfect complete with spicy mustard and sour kraut, the highlight (if you want to call it that) of this stop on the tour is meeting our homeless friend who we'll call "Ratman." We'll call him "Ratman" because of the obvious....he was carrying a rat that was crawling all through his hair....which was in pigtails. It was quite frightening, and I realized in that moment, him walking through our tour group shouting profanities at us, that I am pretty sheltered. I wanted to snap a picture, but was too scared! But picture this: long curly hair in pig tails, rat crawling through said pigtails, lime green war paint on face, shouting profanities. It was fun.

 I enjoyed my dog, despite "Ratman"

Next: Momofuku Milk Bar for famous Compost Cookie

Um..she also makes "Cereal Milk Ice Cream". Genius. Pure Genius.

So, those were my favorite stops on the food tour. We did stop at a pizza place, but we weren't that impressed with it. So, our mission the next day was to find the most amazing pizza that we could. And I think we succeeded in finding Majestic Pizza.

 He's a happy boy.

Are you still with me? I know this is a long one, but if you still have the stamina to stay a little longer, here are a few more pictures of our weekend.

Dinner in the West Village with Andy's sweet cousin, Alex, who lives in the city.

Heading to my first Broadway show, Phantom of the Opera.

 All of us on the water taxi.

terrible picture of us with my cousin, Kevin, and his girlfriend, Jen. Kevin also lives in the city.

I hope you're still awake! Whew...that took a long time.