We arrived late Friday night and I was immediately overwhelmed with emotion. I hadn't realized how homesick I was until the customs agent said, "Welcome home." I burst into tears replying, "It's good to be home." The fact that I hadn't slept in 18 hours may have been playing with my emotions, but it felt so good to be back.
As we came across the Williamsburg bridge into the city, it was so great to see the streets filled with such a diverse crowd of people. Have I mentioned that Hong Kong is not a very diverse city, where Chinese make up 90% of the population?
We spent the weekend at our old apartment building at the corner of Chrystie and Houston Street, where our good friend still lives. After a 16 hour flight, it was so nice to stay in such a familiar place. As soon as I dropped off my bags, I rushed to Whole Foods to grab some dinner before crashing. Our old grocery store looked the same. Nothing had moved. I quickly found our favorite granola, yogurt, some organic fruit and freshly prepared sandwiches. It was so nice to be in a place where I knew what I was going to find around every corner.
The next morning I attended a Soul Cycle class by my favorite instructor, Jenny, in Union Square. It's the best workout ever and it totally kicked my butt after not having taken a spinning class in 6 months.
On the way home from spinning, I stopped by the Union Square farmers market to grab some apple cider donuts, an old favorite of mine. I also stopped by my favorite coffee shop in the LES, Bowery Coffee, where I ran into an old college friend that I hadn't seen since we graduated. What a small world.
We spent the majority of the weekend with M's wonderful sister, boyfriend and cousin in Brooklyn, where we ate ridiculously good food, played cornhole and jenga at at awesome bar and tested 30 flavors of ice cream at an ice cream making competition. It was my kind of competition and I was happy to be a judge!
I was in town for a work conference, so the weekdays were spent in meetings. However, my nights were free so we carefully planned each evening to maximize time with family and friends. We also picked cuisines that were more difficult to find in HK. We had BBQ at Blue Smoke in Gramercy with some NY friends, we met my college girlfriends for a classic American meal at Back Forty, we savored delicious steaks at Del Frisco's with M's college friends and I celebrated my girlfriend's recent engagement at Cafe Cluny, an old West Village neighborhood favorite.
We ended our trip to NY just as we had shared our last meal back in January... at Mary's Fish Camp with M's sister and boyfriend. We are pretty much obsessed with their lobster rolls and we couldn't think of 2 better people to share our last meal with!
And if our week in NYC wasn't busy enough, M and I found a few moments to celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary!
And just like that, we were packing our bags and leaving New York again. M was off to Philadelphia and Baltimore to visit some great friends. And I was off to California for a weekend in Sonoma with my college girlfriends... More to come on that trip this week!
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