Guests Abound!

Tim, Gina and I on top of Rockefeller Center


Tim and Gina at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park


Tim and Gina on the Staten Island Ferry

This last two weeks we had some lovely visits with friends. First we had my college friend Gina and her husband Tim visiting us from Minnesota. It's been quite some time since we saw Gina and Tim last - in fact I think it was at our reception in Madison in July 2008. They arrived on a Friday night and stayed through Monday morning. Boy did we pack in a LOT in the few days they were here! We saw EVERYTHING that NYC has to offer - all the sights including landmarks, New York City characters, and good food. The time went too quickly, but we certainly had fun! I'm looking forward to the next time Gina can come visit with our other college friend Anna - it's been since 2006 that the two of them visited together.

Our Second visitors arrived on Tuesday morning - David and Nieves came from Dublin (they are friends from Spain).

David and Nieves waiting for the train.


At dinner at Virgil's BBQ.


and a photo of Felipe and I :)





We had a terrific time with David and Nieves - at a bit slower pace than the weekend before with Gina and Tim (mainly because we had a bit more time for their visit). We had a couple of nights in for dinner, even including a homemade pizza night, and we went out and about too. It was nice getting to spend some more quality time with David and Nieves, as most of our hanging out time in the past (at least for me) was at a lunch or dinner, or wedding - so this was a great chance for me to get to know them a bit better. I hope we have more opportunity for that in the future!

I'll catch up a bit with more posts this weekend. Sorry for my huge absence - September has turned out to be an EXTREMELY busy month...and has flown by!

P.S. - I was so tired from all the excitement of having guests the two past weeks that I was exhausted. David and Nieves left for the airport last Sunday around 5pm, and I was in bed by 8:00pm - something I never do unless I'm sick!

Snapshots of a Family Visit

A Superior brand of In-Laws


Having some fun at the Lincoln Center





“I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, ‘Get the hell off my property’.”

~ Joan Rivers

Fortunately for me, Joan and I have very different types of Mothers-in-law. I have a blast with my mother-in-law Eda! Eda and Primitivo have been in town since September 20th, and are about to end their six week U.S. adventure tomorrow. Even with our tiny NYC apartment, it's nice to share our home with family, and to have them here to share our daily lives with them.

We had nice dinners, both out and at home. We walked all over the place, we went shopping, we gave iPad (Paddington) lessons....and we'll miss them when they head back to Barcelona. Although I am sure Ana will be happy to have them back! But it won't be long before we see them again - we'll meet in Rio de Janeiro for Christmas....

What Luck I Have!

Down pour in Central Park.

Today was one of those days that got darker and darker, signaling the weather we had to come. As I left work I could feel the humidity, like swimming through the air. I waited at the bus stop, with some added delay due to traffic issues, and eagerly got on the bus when it pulled around the corner. Three stops in, it poured. And I mean poured so hard it sounded like the bus was under pellet gun attack, and the lightning so close the sound and the flash were startling. It was an amazing flash storm, one that apparently caused a great deal of damage in Brooklyn and even had the greater New York City area under tornado warning (only the second time I recall since moving out here five years ago). To my great fortune, as the title of this post suggests, by the time the bus arrived to my stop the rain had almost completely ceased, hurray!

Other luck would have it that I've been very happy to have had some visitors recently. This last weekend we had a great time visiting with our friend Laurence who was in town from Paris. She arrived Friday evening of last week and we had a great weekend - dined out a bit, went shopping together. Thoroughly enjoyable!


Felipe and Laurence in the subway after our Sunday lunch at EJs Luncheonette.

Additionally, my Aunt Diane was in town with my Uncle Paul for some business related travel. She managed to sneak a night in for us, so that we could have dinner together. Uncle Paul was headed to the Mets game with my cousin, and she was more than happy to come visit with me instead of sit at the game (made me happy too!). She arrived to my apartment around 7:00pm and we chatted for a bit before heading to the Times Square area to have dinner with Felipe at Un Deux Troix.





It was so nice to have dinner and hear stories. But not only that, to share a little bit of my New York City life with some family. I don't have much extended family visiting here in the city, and sometimes miss that a great deal.

And the visitors will continue. This weekend Laurence will be back in town again, and this time Sylvain will join her too, and we've not seen him since our last visit to Paris in January. AND (haha) directly after that, Felipe's parents will arrive Monday morning after a month long road trip around the Southwest. We're really looking forward to hearing all of their stories and seeing the pictures from the amazing places they went. So I may be busy for the next two weeks (we also have Felipe's birthday and our anniversary on the horizon), but I will try to keep up!

A Busy Week...

The past week was a busy one, actually I am a week behind in posting this. We had a couple of visitors in town this week, and so had a busy time seeing friends and family.

Sara, my cousin Steve's wife, was in town from California for work. It was such a treat to have her join us for dinner on Thursday. We made a chicken and enjoyed dinner and chatted about the recent inauguration and she was kind enough to bring dessert - these hilarious and yummy Obama Cupcakes:



The other visitor was my friend Sammi. Sammi's a friend of mine since middle school, and I was super excited for this visit - she and her mom came here from Wisconsin to scope out the city because she is moving out here in about a month! Yay! We had a nice dinner with them on Wednesday night after they arrived to town.

We were planning on going to our favorite NYC restaurant Virage with them on Friday night for dinner. In the meantime I was suggesting to a friend at work that she take her friends (also visiting) to Virage during the weekend. In the process of this, I was showing her the website for the restaurant and noticed that they had pictures of Felipe and I on their website! See below: