I went down to New York to visit my friend, Sara, over the weekend and much like my trip to Montréal in April, it was filled with shopping, ALL of the coffee, eating (gluten-free!) and drinking, and lots of walking. It was great to spend time with her after not having seen her in person for a year and lots of fun being in the Big City. If you follow me on
Instagram, then you got a glimpse of our shenanigans in real time. Here you can get the whole rundown.
After picking me up at the bus drop off (I traveled with Megabus), Sara and I made our way over to the Chelsea area. On our way, we passed this wine store with the amusing sign in the window. I definitely recommend popping in to this shop for any and all of your (French) wine needs (but seriously, what other wine needs would you have anyway?). The owner was in and wonderfully nice as well incredibly knowledgeable. Added incentive: they do wine tastings all day
every day. The two wines that day were a Rosé and a Pinot Noir. Continuing on our way, we stumbled upon La Maison du Macaron where we naturally had to pop in. We managed to keep our cool and limited ourselves to only one macaron each. I got the Orange Blossom flavour and am happy to report that it was divine. Now onto the baby sparrow story.
Baffled, while holding a baby sparrow |
Bareburger | Having a
Trop Pop after a spot of shopping
Yes, that is a live baby sparrow in my hand. Why? Well, Sara and I were walking down 8th Avenue and we passed this poor baby on the sidewalk. Before having even a second to think of what to do, a man walked up to it, picked him up and just dropped him into my hands. We probably stood there for at least five minutes completely baffled. Thankfully, New York loves its animals and a quick Google search showed plenty of animal hospitals around, one of which was conveniently just a few blocks away. He was totally cool with the walk over - bobbing his head with each step and either pretending to fly or just drying his wings. The animal hospital was SO nice. They immediately took him from me to check on him but had us wait to know how he was. It turns out that he was dehydrated and he had a minor infection on his back, probably from the fall out of his nest. One of the nurses there fosters birds and offered to take him home and nurse him back to health until he's ready to be released. They gave me the option to do that myself if I wanted, but how on Earth would I have gotten him back to Boston? I'm ecstatic that I was able to help a tiny little life.
Still trying to get over that after dousing our hands with hand sanitizer, we headed over to Bareburger for lunch (where more hand washing and sanitizing ensued). Widely acclaimed for their all-natural, free-range burgers, they're also very popular for gluten-free! I've had to be gluten-free since early June due to my inflammatory polyarthritis and let me tell you, it has NOT been easy. Sara was absolutely brilliant and searched for a variety of gluten-free eateries before my arrival so that there wouldn't be any worry about breaking my diet during my stay. I got a wild boar burger on their tapioca bun and it was delicious! I am wicked excited about the fact that Bareburger will be coming to Boston sometime in the Fall.
It was a bit past midnight at this point, but we were walking around the outskirts of Times Square and stumbled upon this interesting spot. Pie Face is originally an Australian concept that has made its way to New York. Their claim to fame, and also their name, is their mini-pies with faces on them. Quite cute and I imagine probably delicious, but sadly something I couldn't try because of gluten. I did however try one of their coffees. They have four coffee "settings", if you will. Decaf is "still asleep", medium strength is "open my eyes", strong is "start my heart", and super strong (the one I naturally went for) is "kick my arse". Well, it wasn't kidding*. We went to Empanada Mama around 2 in the morning, where the gluten-free empanadas and delicious margarita made me envy New Yorkers for a hot second (I wish Boston was more on its A-game with the 24-hour/gluten-free accommodations/empanada scene). The next day, we started off at Oren's Daily Roast which in my opinion, is still the best iced coffee I've had to date thus far.
*Partially related side story: on Tuesday, I kind of, sort of went through what I'm assuming was caffeine overdose. I woke up that morning as if I had just woken up from the dead - one of those sit-straight-up, gasping-for-air kind of moments. That was before I looked at the time and saw that it was the exact time I was supposed to arrive at work. Heart palpitations, noticeable twitching, and uncontrollable fidgeting made up the next four hours until I finally calmed down. Then I went through what I'm calling
the spectrum of misery. I went from wanting to kill everyone in sight, to having a horrible headache, to crashing really hard, to feeling physically sick and back again. I did the math, and between Friday and Monday, I consumed 45 shots of espresso. Yes
. That happened. I don't recommend you try this at home.
We met up with Sara's friends, Caitlin and Kenneth, for brunch at Nook. Located in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, this tiny little place was fantastic. Sara, Kenneth, and I all got various scrambled eggs (mine were with cream cheese and smoked salmon) accompanied by salad and sweet potato hash, and Caitlin got the smoked salmon eggs benedict. The iced Belgian chocolate was superb. We went to the LEGO store by the Rockefeller Center afterwards, which has a station where you can build your own LEGO people! We each made our own likeness. Don't ask why I decided to be a Musketeer. Moving on, we stumbled upon another shop with macarons and once again showed great self control by only getting one each. I got a lavender one and it was also wonderful.
We passed through Grand Central for the hell of it, which is celebrating its 100th year, then made our way to Discovery Times Square to see The Art of the Brick exhibit before I had to catch my bus back. Open until January 5, if you are in the area or will be in the area before then, please go and see this. The pieces Nathan Sawaya put together are incredible and a must-see for anyone that has ever enjoyed LEGOs in their life. At the end of the exhibit, there's an interactive piece where you are given a LEGO and you write your name on it; once the exhibit closes, Mr. Sawaya will take all of those pieces and will create a special work with them.
This was definitely an enjoyable little weekend. I look forward to going out and having more of these. Do you enjoy these sorts of posts? Let me know if you happen to go to any of the places I listed and do follow me on
Instagram if you aren't already, to keep up with my day-to-day adventures. Thank you for reading and hope to see you again soon!
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