Happy Birthday to Me!

Me imitating Carol

I am officially 21 years old, which means good times for everyone.  My mom and aunt Carol came to visit last weekend to celebrate.  I had an amazing and exhausting time with them.  We started off with some sushi in Brooklyn.  I was hungry and didn't feel like looking very hard for a place to stay.  Plus, we figured we all needed to try something new.  We all somewhat mastered the chopsticks by the end of the meal with the help of home-made training chopsticks the waitress gave us.  I think we all agreed that it was okay and we could eat it once in a while but it wasn't really satisfying.

Carol attempting to learn how to use chopsticks

Then we did a little Brooklyn shopping just up and down the street.  And I found a genuine leather biker jacket for $40.  I have been wanting one for a while now and it wasn't exactly what I had in mind but I'm like what the heck and bought myself a little birthday present.

Mom experienced her first New York subway ride and didn't understand why we had to go through turnstiles when leaving the station, even after many attempts to explain it to her.  "But why can't it just be open?"  I think she finally got it though.

We had cupcakes and wine at Sweet Revenge in the West Village and ate dinner at Marinella's just across the street.  To end the night we went to the Pegu club in Soho and had amazing albeit expensive drinks.  Mom and Carol were beat and I was pretty tired myself, so they went back to Brooklyn while I hung out with a few friends a while longer.

Carol, Mom, and me at Top of the Rock

Friday morning started at Top of the Rock observatory deck, where we got a full view of the city.  We saw some sights on Fifth Avenue and almost made it on television as we entered St. Patrick's Cathedral on Good Friday.  Window shopping and Central park rounded out our tour uptown.  The rest of the day was spent shopping/looking in SoHo.  No one really found anything and Carol and I became numb to the sticker shock.  We ended the night at Arturo's, a great find right by SoHo.  It's seems to be a family run restaurant/bar specializing in pizza.  The atmosphere was great; we were serenaded by an Asian jazz trio throughout most of dinner.  And man was the pizza worth 4 dollars a topping - so delicious.

Carol, Mom and I about to see Priscilla

Saturday we were supposed to go site-seeing, places like the Statue of Liberty and such, but it was raining.  So we took our chances at the tckt booth and got tickets to a matinee showing of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert - a broadway musical about three drag queens on a road-trip through the Australian desert.  With songs by Madonna, Donna Summer, and Cyndi Lauper, how could we not love it?  Plus it had drag.

The rain through us off a little bit and we weren't quite sure what to do.  We didn't get to see the MoMA because it closed at 5 and the show didn't get out until 4 something.   And none of us had any real ideas of what we wanted to do.  So I took them down St. Marks Place just to check it out and then we had dinner in the East Village at a place called Candella's.  It had stopped raining and was nice enough to sit outside by this point.  The owner was very accommodating and we enjoyed our Italian and Cuban dishes, desserts, and some Dutch, Chocolate Red Wine (isn't dat vierd?) on the house.

The weekend was pretty exhausting.  I don't think I've walked that much since ever. (Except last week when I walked 130 blocks from 116th to my dorm in 2.5 hours.  Good times.)  And we didn't do anything too terribly crazy or exiting, but it was nice just to be together. 

On a separate note, the weather today was H-O-T gorgeous.  And I got a little bit of a sunburn while I was celebrity stalking in central park.  But that will be my next post.