Take a Bite of THAT, Big Apple

“I am not – I repeat – I am NOT taking selfies all weekend.”

Taylor Brooks, New York City, 2017

After the worst vacation ever last year, we’ve been hesitant to try again. (Our doctors’ bills seem to go up exponentially when we travel.)

But MIRACLE OF ALL MIRACLES, we actually had a successful solo vacation to New York City last weekend.

(I know. It’s surprising to me, too, and I was there.)

We’re one week post-vacation, no signs of E. coli or Giardia in sight. We. made. it.

We didn’t just *make it*, we killed it.

We biked around Central Park, an experience you should definitely ask Taylor about.

We ate at a Michelin star restaurant where the food was tiny and weird, but beautiful. (And also a little gaggy, if we’re being honest. Looking at you, boiled quail egg.)

We visited the 9/11 museum – an incredibly moving memorial that should require its visitors to pace their emotions better than we did. (You just don’t realize how big and detailed that place is when you first get in. We emoted too fiercely in the beginning and got overwhelmed by the end.)

We went to the top of the Freedom Tower (One World Trade Center) for the killer 360º city views.

We took pictures with various booty-related things because you can take the parents away from the little boys but you cannot take the little boy humor out of the parents.

And when all else failed, we ate. Again. We exceeded the daily caloric intake suggestion by roughly 400%.

Pizza, street hot dogs, pasta, donuts, cheesecake…we left no neighboring eating establishment unvisited.

Throughout the whole trip, we only had one argument that resulted in a brief stint of not speaking to each other. It happened in the middle of Times Square and it was a combination of fatigue, bloating, 98º temperatures, seizure-inducing LED billboards, one of us who absolutely did not need to consult a map, and the other who was hangry enough not to enjoy wandering aimlessly with all 504,000 of our fellow sweaty tourists looking for a toy store that may or may not exist. Our silence lasted through lunch where pizza magically fixed everything and I stopped being a jerk.

We truly had the best time ever.

Relaxing? No.

But fun. So very fun. And delicious.

A few takeaways from New York City:

Taylor is way too nice to live there. He’s all “excuse me” and “pardon me” on the subway. Resident New Yorkers are all “don’t talk to me, creep”.
Judging by the size of our hotel room and the amount of space between restaurant tables in New York, things in Texas really are bigger.
“Not taking selfies” all weekend made for the most hilarious vacation photos of all time. When he wasn’t ignoring me, he was sabotaging my photo efforts: