The weekend of October 15th, Charlie's friend of high school, Jason, came to visit him and another high school friend, Brian. Jason had been in New York for work for the week and stayed for the weekend. On Saturday, the three of them met at their favorite Wings Place (The Candlelight Inn) in White Plains near Brian's house because his wife, Adrienne was just a few days away from her due date. We posted about it about a year ago, but the Candlelight Inn isn't a romantic restaurant that the name would make you think .... it is quite deceiving because it is home to the area's best wings (or so Charlie claims, even better than his previous favorite in Ohio, Wing and Rings) and a small little bar with only about 10 tables. Katie had a hair appointment and met the guys and Adrienne later at their house with a brand new hair-do. Charlie was a little shocked because it was first time in our 11 years of being together that Katie had bangs. Charlie said it was a nice change but he said he always liked the way I looked before too.
All three of the boys' teams - Michigan (Charlie), Illinois (Jason), and Clemson (Brian) - were all undefeated coming into this weekend. It looked like they were bad luck being together - Michigan lost to rival Michigan St. in the 12:00 game, Ohio State beat Illinois in a 3:30 game, and Clemson was on the ropes against Maryland in the 7:00 game. Clemson did come back, so the teams weren't winless. Katie brought Griffey to the Adrienne and Brian's - he was a little nervous, but he got along great with their cats! Just kidding - Griffey does not seem to be a cat-friendly dog...
The next weekend, Charlie's sister, Abby, came to visit NYC and Philadelphia with some of her medical school friends. She came a couple days early to stay with us and it was great spending time with her. We picked her up from LaGuardia Airport on Saturday evening and took her to a new (well new to us) restaurant in Ridgewood, New Jersey, which just a few towns over from our town but has a larger down-town area. We picked a Neapolitan Pizza place called A Mano. The restaurant is one of 3 in the United States certified by the two organizations that authenticate Neapolitan Pizza restaurants. We shared 2 pizzas between the three of us - a classic Neapolitan (Margherita) and a "Mezza Luna" - or half moon pizza - which is half pizza, half calzone. And then we got a smorgasbord of desserts - Tiramisu, Nutella "pizza" and even some Gelato!
On Sunday, we headed into the city with Abby for some sight-seeing. Charlie and Abby went to the famous Katz's deli in Manhattan for lunch. Katz serves some of the best deli-style sandwiches you'll find - Abby got corned beef and turkey reuben, Charlie both got a pastrami and tongue combo. When you walk into Katz's - each person gets a ticket. When you order, they cut you a taste test of what you ordered, write down what you've got to pay, and you can't leave without handing over the ticket and payment on the way out. If you're ever there - go with the corned beef. Charlie usually likes pastrami best - but he tried some of Abby's sandwich, and the corned beef here is amazing!
Katie met them down in New York laster due to a Junior League lunch. We met in the Meat-packing district where the "High-Line" starts. The High-Line was an above ground rail-road system (similar to Chicago's Train system ) that was built in the 1930's remove dangerous freight trains from the streets of Manhattan by building a train system 30-feet in the air. The train system stopped being used in the 1980's and was transformed into a park in 2009. It starts in the Meat-packing district around 13th Street and currently ends at 30th street (but there are plans to extend it to 34th street) and we walked the whole way. It was a beautiful day and had lovely views of the city.
Here's the website: http://www.thehighline.org/
Afterwords, we walked over to 5th and 34 Street streets for the Empire State Building. Charlie and I had gone to the top of the Empire State building, a few years after we graduated college once while we visited NYC. The top of Empire State building is magnificient and is amazing to think of how it was constructed in 1931 and towers as New York's tallest building at 102 stories currently. Charlie had some fun with the camera settings on his phone...
Abby headed down to Philadelphia to meet her friends - while there she determined Penn Station has better Philly Cheesesteaks than Philly does, and after a few days there, she and her friends headed to New York City. Charlie was working in the city on Wednesday, and he got a chance to meet them in the afternoon at the new 9/11 Memorial at what used to be Ground Zero. The monument is an excellent tribute to the tragedy of those days - there are two reflecting pools where each of the Twin Towers stood, surrounded by the names of people who passed away in the 9/11 attacks and the 6 casualties of the 1993 WTC bombing.
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