Holy shit.
I really do luff new York now.
I mean, you know, despite the fact that our first night there, we were turned away from a bar in the Mandarin hotel (I’m pretty sure it was my cotton dress and sub-par belt, or it may have been older guy’s sneakers – what hotel bar closes at 12:30 in NYC, really. I see you, there, bouncer in a suit who asked us for our room keys and turned us away when we said we wanted to go to the bar) and I watched some really creepy dude (who MAY or MAY NOT have looked like an older version of that jerk who currently lives in Australia) lick the same Powerade bottle while bent over a trash can (any guessers to what he may have been doing?); we finally came back to an Irish Pub (seriously there were like 8 between us and Times Square) where we split some appetizers, watched some men toast to Chicago (and exchanged wishes of “I hope they toast to DA BEARS!!”) and tried several pilsners, dark beers, ciders, and how nice it was to see each other and the trip ahead.
Ahhhh, beer. It brings all good things together.
We also watched some of the US Open from that day, laughed at the Double Down commercials, and I almost shrieked at the sight of a sing-song Red Stripe Light commercial (IT COMES IN LIGHT NOW!).
We then retired to our Sheraton New York hotel near Times Square and settled in for the evening… Wait, I left an entire part out. They totally didn’t clean our room from the previous guest! And then our second room was incredibly warm. I was so tired that I just put on my very nice, new, soft Soma robe, put in some earplugs, and covered my eyes with a pillow. When I woke up the next day, there was a fan pointing towards our bed and, I’m pretty sure the sound of my teeth chattering woke me up.
I insisted he sleep on that side of the bed for the remainder of our trip.
(OH, and I GOOGLED YOU, MANDARIN BAR!) (You DO have a dress code but you DO close at midnight. Oops.)
