Thursday March 3nd - Life is too short to slice beans

Time to spice things up -- we decided to have a pub crawl. We have no car so we set off walking spanning 4 towns and covering about a 5 mile distance when all was said and done. Our day went a little something like this….

STOP 1: The Grantley Arms – our coffee and water pub crawl pregame. We found ourselves in the company of a few English blokes enjoying a brunch time beer.

STOP 2: Jenny’s old house in Chinthurst Park- a nice older man let us in and bragged about how the house looks better now. It does not. We also peeped her primary school.

STOP 3: The Queen Victoria - our favorite bartender of our pub crawl, 19-year old Boris gave us our first half pint of the day, Kronenbur, a German beer and our new go-to. Boris talked about his travels in Europe and gave us some recommendations of some places he has enjoyed travelling to. We had a long conversation about Skips and were reassured by Boris (although he
was pretty spacey so his word didn’t mean much) and a local beer drinking dad that skips in fact do still exist, great news! It was at this pub we realized that we had discovered an entire subculture of 40 to 50 something men who drink midday in a country where it is totally acceptable.

STOP 4: The Seahorse - A boring bartender gave us a Spanish beer, Estrella. We realized this pub was trying way too hard and was too snooty for us. We were feeling pretty snacky by
this time and the next pub was a 20 minute walk so we had some french fries (well chips as they say here) and split a stuffed mushroom appetizer. A nice girl bartender recommended some pubs to include on our pub crawl and suggested we make put way to Legion in Guildford and then Five & Lime later that night. We had a long debate amongst ourselves about the bread basket nearby and whether or not it was free...not sure why we didn't ask which is very unlike us as we love free stuff.

STOP 5: The Boatman - This pub was right on the river and our favorite spot of the day. If Kelly was a Guildford local this is where he would want to have her parties. If you know Kelly you know she loves parties and knows how to throw the best of them. Dear Boatman, the fact that THE Kelly Puckett would like to have any kind of event at your pub is a huge compliment. She would call herself picky but the rest of us know she is just damn hard to please!

STOP 6: Bar Des Arts – next door to our intended destination, Legion, which was closed. This strange art exhibition/cougar wine bar had very few people inside and 2 strange bartenders, Jimmy and Leor, who we befriended despite the fact they mocked our country of origin, accents, pub crawl, and general personalities. These guys also recommended Five & Lime as the happening night life spot we should visit. We had a Stella for good measure and then decided it
was dinner time so we left.


STOP 7: Wagamama - a popular Asianish restaurant here known for its big bowls of noodles in soup. We were less than impressed wig the cafeteria style seating, rude staff, and subpar noodle soup. We were in a fantastic mood despite these downfalls and laughed so mug throughout our meal that we practically had noodle soup coming out of our noses. Just because we are in England does not make us too mannerly to slurp soup out of a giant bowl.

STOP 8: The White House – this fairly crowded pub was mismatched in decor with a young bar staff who were clearly more concerned with flirting with each other than serving the thirty something crowd here - we liked that about them. We decided another Kronenburg sounded delicious but not as delicious as chocolate sponge pudding, so we got both. It was here than jenny had the realization that she had zero desire to move back to Guildford later in her life.



STOP 9: George Abbot - We don't really know what to say about this spot... Super alternative Guildford youths meet work gathering of boring colleges, better people watching than the
airport, and better beer too.



STOP 10: Five & Lime - Our first impression of this so-called hot spot was not so hot. We were
relieved we hadn't paid for transportation back to Evan and Sue's to doll up for the night because we were rather disappointed with what we found as we slid into a booth and were met with unwelcome travel advice from 3 forty somethings sipping champagne. They left and the booth filled up with local guys and some American girls being loud and obnoxious (we are just as surprised as you are that we weren't the loud obnoxious American girls in this scenario). We asked the quiet guy on the end if he would snap a photo of us and found out he was a student at
the local music school here, apparently one of the best for contemporary music in the nation. Jordan was his name, and he clearly wasn't too fond of his friends either, as he ditched them and set out with us to figure out where the live music playing through the nearby speakers was coming from. We stepped outside and were so happy to see an awesome musician covering some of our favorite tunes (from Gaga's “Poker Face” to Michael Jackson's “Black or White”) plus lots of music we had never heard before. We made our way to the front of the outdoor crowd (thankfully there were lots of heaters) and a big group of rowdy guys at the picnic table nearest the singer invited us to join them. They were the self proclaimed Timmy fan club (Timmy was the singer) and we were honorary club members for the night. We had so much fun singing and dancing to song after song with this random group of new friends. The night turned out to be a huge success! Just as one member of Timmy’s fan club was getting up to get a round of jaeger bombs (yuck) we made a break for it and went inside waving quick goodbyes to the fan club.

As we were heading out to our next destination, The Slug and Lettuce, we bumped into the 2 bartenders from Bar Des Arts. They said they were heading that way too to go to a really fun bar...which turned out to be a late night kebab place. Fun, but not quite what we had in mind...our bartender buddies were pretty adamant that we should go back to their place and drink champagne and we were pretty adamant that we should NOT. We joked that we had seen the movie Taken and avoided all sketchy situations when travelling (actually not a joke at all but our rule to live by) to which the bartenders declared themselves to be "not very rapey." For our female readers out there, we are prettyyy sure that these are some major red flags - our cue to leave the kebab place full of drunkards was well overdue. We let our new friends down nicely informing them that by their choice of words they were indeed even sketchier than they seemed. Hopefully they will take our advice for more willing candidates , but the reality seems to be that not many American girls can say no to these British dudes. We however, were much more excited to go eat brownies and hit the sheets. We left our weirdo bartenders snacking on their kebab wraps (obviously we ate one too, just much more quickly than they did) to get a cab back to Sue and Evans. The 2 of us set off down the high street to the main road where a well dressed older guy was walking near us...who turned out to be the town crazy or on some serious drugs (never judge a book by its cover we suppose). After this crazy day and night of random self made fun we were happy bunnies when our cab dropped us off at our temporary home.

Today’s lesson:
If we can make an adventure out of Guildford, we can make an adventure out of anywhere!

Wednesday March 2nd – The Skip Hunt

Today was our first full day “across the pond” as Mike P. would say. We are currently in Guildford, England, about forty minutes outside of London. This is the very place that yours truly spent most of her childhood…. Jenny. If you thought for even a split second we were talking about Kelly, you obviously have never met us and in which case we will ask the question, why are you reading our blog? Hmm…weird. I guess you can stay anonymous blog reader, but don’t try anything funny.

Ok back to today.... We decided not to set alarms, since we needed to catch up on some sleep. Well Kelly stumbled into Jenny’s room at what Jenny assumed was about 8am… in fact it was half past noon. Woops! Still feeling like we could sleep for another 12 hours, we hopped up for a delicious bowl of Shreddies and showered (we feel like this is worth mentioning since it has been more than a few blog posts since our last bathing experiences- don’t judge). We let our excitement to skip around town take over our jet lagged bodies and we headed out to catch a bus. Well we missed one bus and walked around here for a few moments. The hunt for “Skips” had begun. Jenny has a few favorite foods from England and #1 in her heart are a chip called Skips… well, so far no luck. Sue doesn’t have any in the house (and hasn’t in a long while) and the nearby gas station had none! This is all very discouraging, but we will continue our search! (it also doubles as yet another captivating story line for you loyal followers…we know you are on the edge of your seats with this one).

A little insert from Jenny on this one…

Seriously they cannot have stopped making Skips! First of all, they are delicious – and secondly they are always right next to the Hula Hoops (which are my sister’s favorite). I have already had to say goodbye to my other favorite discontinued snack, the gone but not forgotten crunchy M&M, ugh, tragic. I refuse to allow Skips to face the same terrible fate! Hey English rellies, if any of you know anything about Skips please comment! Thanks :)

Ookay, now back to this riveting blog post.
We caught up to another bus...almost (after dodging some traffic - Kelly is still getting ahold of which way to look first when crossing the street). We managed to miss this bus also, nevermind, we were in a great mood and obviously weren't trying very hard to catch these buses anyway. When we did get on a bus we realized we had NO cash, a few dollars and some colones jingled in our purses but we were pretty sure these wouldn't get us far. We explained to the bus driver, who closely resembled father time, but with a shorter beard and a bit more well fed, and he rolled his eyes and said hop on. Hooray! Not many public transit people will go out of their way for you- we knew we had got lucky with Father Time. About ten minutes later (and 7 or 8 school children drop offs) we were in downtown Guildford. The High Street is the place to be down here, so we wandered up and up, stopping in lots of cute shops. We picked up a few things and then headed into a super cute little coffee shop for a warm drink and snack. Afterwards we strolled down some side streets; we saw St. Mary’s church-where people have worshiped for over 1000 years and Lewis Carroll’s funeral was held, found a cool pub with live music on Thursday evenings, and then we stopped in Debenhams to buy hats and gloves (R.I.P. tans we worked so hard on). We each found hats (gloves tomorrow). We scoped out the local nighttime scene and headed to the bus station. We had to wait a while, but we caught the last bus back! Sue was already making another delicious dinner by then which is more glorious than we can possibly describe here. So the four of us sat down with delicious chicken, butternut squash, green beans and potatoes (veggies yay!). Our meal was of course followed by some delicious pastry dessert- cream puff balls and fruit covered in chocolate sauce and cream (will need to walk long and far tomorrow to make up for this one). We were oh so content. Evan called their and the Foster’s other friends, the Foleys, to meet us for a drink. We walked up the road to the Jolly Farmer for our first British pint (well, Kelly’s first, not so much Jenny’s). HBB was the local pick for the evening. Not bad at all! The 6 of us sat around chatting; the moms in shock of how much Jenny resembles her mom in every way and what all the kids are up too, while Kelly learned about the Guildford Round Table and explained Kentucky and Bourbon to the dads. We had a great time! Jenny and Kelly decided it was a perfect time to pop in the hot tub…which was at the end of Sue and Evans garden and turned out to be less of a warm adventure than we had hoped since it was freezing outside! Jet lag kept us up until about 2:30am, not great for our plan of waking up at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Oh well, we are enjoying this homey part of our trip to relax, catch up on sleep, and have a little calm before the storm that will be hostel-hopping in who-knows-where that we will head to next.


Gringas do Guildford



Jenny in front of her fave British grocery store


St. Mary's Church - Guildford is clearly quite the sightseeing spot. But for real, this church was reallyy old



Jenny and Evan post-pub time at the Jolly Farmer

Tuesday March 1st – Saved by the Lasagna

We arrived at Heathrow airport in London at 10am local time, which was 5am to our body clocks. As we had spent the last 7 hours curled up in awkward positions crammed in airplane seats, we weren’t exactly working with a good night’s rest. As most of you know, traveling like this is about as miserable as it gets…or so we thought. This is a happy blog so we are going to fast forward the details of our miserable journey, which included a bout of severe motion sickness for Jenny in the restroom of a moving bus. Let’s jump forward about 5 hours….Kelly and Jenny woke up from a wonderful and much needed nap, which was really more of a coma, just in time to eat the most amazing dinner of lasagna, salad, fresh bread, and brownies with ice cream prepared by Sue. It was at this time we were alert enough to get a grip of our surroundings. Evan and Sue are 2 of Jenny’s parents' absolute best friends from when The Fosters lived in Guildford (up until the year 2000). Sue and Evan have known Jenny for all of her life and are the best second set of parents anyone could ask for. They are really kind people and can both have you on the floor laughing, but with very different senses of humor. Evan pointed out that he had left us a chocolate on our pillows, but that with the hotel standards we should expect a hefty bill at the end of the week. It felt so nice to be in an actual house – not an apartment on a dirt road or in a high rise building, or in a tent or hostel room…a real live house with a front door that opened onto a fully paved road.

Anyway, back to the lasagna, it was unbelievable and we can’t thank our substitute mother, Sue, enough for the great meals she fed us while we were here. We ate for days and then had a totally zone out TV kind of night. We know this sounds terrible as we are supposed to be on full speed ahead travel mode, but this guilty indulgence was so worth it. Evan warned us that our lengthy afternoon nap would ruin our chance to sleep through the night…he couldn’t have been more wrong. We were asleep before our heads hit the pillow at 11pm,ish and we didn’t so much as shift in our sleep until 12:30pm the next day!

Enough Said ...

Anobium House

New York City: The Nutshell Version

Jenny's short and sweet NYC overview:

For those of you who have read our guest blog entry, written by none other than my wonderful mother, you know that I had 2 of my favorites with me in New York this weekend (well, 3 because Miss Puckett is already with me)! A quick apology to Shea and my mother for acting like a total alien and seeming so bewildered by hot water, paved streets, clean sheets, make up, rain, ect.) It was so so soo great to see my mom - she is an amazing and inspiring person and I am SO thankful to have her wonderful self back in fighting shape able to hop on a plane for a quick day in the city. (Shout out to my dad, thanks for acrueing all those air miles Simon! Mwah!) It was so nice to sit and catch up with her - if you know my mom you will agree that she is such a bright positive person and a joy to be around! Can't wait to see my her again in Barcelona and be able to spend a little more quality time with her, hopefully this time without the total downpour. Hey mom, why didn't we take an epic jumping picture for the blog? Talk about a missed opportunity!! Love you tons and tons Plat and thanks a million for making the journey!

I am going to keep my weekend summary pretty short since the majority of consisted of being on a boyfriend high after not seeing Shea for 3 weeks, which has felt like an eternity…sad but true, I am rolling my eyes at myself. I am going to spare all of our blog readers any kind of sappy entry about how happy I am that he came to NYC (very veryy happy, thank you so SO much for coming Shea!! Insert another eye roll here) because let’s be serious, no one cares about that. I will briefly say that my favorite experience that we had together in the big apple was the evening that we explored Time Square and indulged in a healthy meal of cheeseburgers, mac 'n' cheese, and ice cream (he is a fitness buff after all) before wandering around the lit up streets checking out the must sees (which included the M&M factory and mega Toys R Us) while cracking each other up for hours :)

Anyway, take it away Kel!

Time Square

Getting lost on the subway

Kelly's NYC weekend: The Princess and the Pea

The tone for my NYC experience was pretty much set from the moment I left Newark. One of my dad’s very best friends, Joe, had arranged a car to pick me up so I was greeted by a very friendly Indian man in an immaculate black suburban (but we already wrote about this). No sooner had I entered the upper west side, was Joe horrified and disciplining me for my obscene amount of luggage. It was only fair, it really was ridiculous and to make matters worse I had another box of clothes waiting for me in a box here. Feel free to start with the “poor Joe’s” now. He let my smelly self and even smellier load of baggage ransack his perfect apartment, and we caught up over a few “welcome back to America” beers. I opened my package of warmer clothes (thanks mom!) and threw on some more appropriate attire so Joe and I could go out in search of dinner. He introduced me to the doormen and the area, bought me a 7-day metro pass, and we ran into his girlfriend Melinda (an almost unheard of occurrence in the NYC streets of anonymity). The two of us sat down in the front window of Amber, perfect for people watching on my first night in the city, and gorged on sushi and rice. It was such a fun first night back in the states, and to make it even better, Joe let me and my stuff take over his room when we got home and the poor working man crashed on his own couch. Now that is hospitality. I told Joe I could definitely live this life in NYC, which he of course had a hearty laugh over. I do mesh well in the doormen and key card entry apartment lifestyle… sigh. Maybe someday yall.

Curious as to whether or not we would be able to sleep in, I was not surprised to find myself awake at 8am Friday morning. Within moments I had a text from the oh-so-witty Jenny saying “cockadoodledoooo!”. Isn’t she clever? After a fleeting moment of missing Samara, I quickly realized I was a normal temperature, in a pillow top bed, with a hot shower only five CLEAN steps away! HEAVEN! So after a long, hot shower (I realized how accustomed I had come to feeling dirty) I set off into the city I had been anxiously awaiting to return to since I was 18. All that was missing from this perfect morning (I wasn’t even phased yet by the cold gray day) was a venti Starbucks. No worries, it was a hop skip and jump from my oh so sweet doorman. One train ride later, I was downtown meeting all of Joes lovely co-workers at UBS. They pointed me in one important direction, H&M, just a few blocks over. This was a bad idea. Apparently my slightly less vain than normal life the past few weeks, combined with the adrenaline rush of being in the big apple got the best of me at my first shopping stop. I wandered the three floors for a way too long and completely disregarded my travel budget. whoops! I mean, what is better than new dresses? Well maybe...shoes... but that’s beside the point. Luckily, Jenny called and gave me about 15 minutes to meet them at lunch- thank goodness. A few impulse purchases later, me and my large bag headed off towards the restaurant. Being the anti-umbrella enthusiast I am, I didn’t mind the light mist for the few blocks I had to walk. Well it turned out to be like 15 blocks, and halfway through Mother Nature opened up her flood gates. I was mildly embarrassed for a few seconds, until I realized that everyone was completely drenched, umbrellas flying up overhead. So I had that even more embarrassing moment where you laugh out loud by yourself, and took off jogging (while protecting my new items). I found the little cafe and stormed in to find a priceless look on my lunch mates faces, as the water dripped from my nose and hair. So what if my Uggs don’t dry until we get to London? It was worth it to spend some time with Jen, Shea and Platti (thanks again for lunch gorgeous!).

I left those three, hopped on another train, and met Joe & Melinda to go see a Hopper and some other exhibit at the Whitney Museum. We strolled through and gave our fair and completely uneducated opinions on the strange art (Joe was much more a fan than I was being the simplest that he is). On our way home, Joe informed us he had a perfect appetizer to pair with a pre-dinner glass of wine. In we walked to Crumbs the cupcake shop... man oh man are this guy and I on the same page in life? Chocolate and red wine before dinner?! Yes please! We got ready and headed to the Village to a tiny but fantastic little restaurant called Commerce where Jen and Shea met us. We had a divine dinner, food and company before J&M set us off into the city to be wild and crazy 20-something year olds. Yeah, not so much. We headed to the meat packing district where we quickly realized, in our food comas, that one more $13 nightcap just wasn’t worth it. So I put my 2 partners in crime on a train home (or so I thought) and walked another block to catch my own. Side note: There was an older man singing at my subway stop. His voice and vocal capabilities were so gorgeous and full of life; it was my devotional for the day I suppose. For my WV friends- it was my GOD moment. A perfect way to end such a great day.

Saturday morning I had breakfast (round 1 for me, 2 for Joe) at Manhattan Diner. It was a fun experience, after reading about my dad, Jim and Joe’s experience here a couple years back :) Plus it is apparently Joe’s spot, since everyone was calling him things like “boss” and there were lots of fist bumps flying. Needless to say we were fed very quickly... it’s nice to have friends in high places. The rest of the day is in another post, since Jenny, Shea and I spent it together! So we shall skip ahead...
After Sunday brunch, I took a quick power nap (Confession: I also watched an episode of Modern Family on my laptop- I miss it, I can’t lie). As I was heading out, Melinda and Joe came home and decided to join me on a walk through the park and to see the Metropolitan Museum. It was a gorgeous day out and we had a lot of fun! Afterwards, Joe turned over his apartment to me one more time (God bless him). I had to convince him I was more than content with some alone time (Jill P. Says I have always needed a little and always will ha!). I threw on sweats, watched the Oscars, did loads and loads of laundry, and Skyped with friends at home (Addison Grace showed me all her new 3 year old toys and the one in the oven is growinnn’ which made my heart smile). I wish I could describe how glorious it was to just do nothing in a nice apartment. It was such a great way to round out my weekend layover. I crawled back into my luxurious bed for one good last night sleep before..Europe? Oh geez what have we got ourselves into this time...

Monday Jen and I reunited, so let the adventure stories begin again (I’m sure after this rather boring blog entry by yours truly you are thrilled to death to get back to normal). Reducing to one bag was beyond stressful for this packrat, which I procrastinated by watching episodes of The Bachelor (yeah yeah guilty pleasure #2, shush). Joe, aka THE MAN, came to the rescue again though. Which brings me to the last thing I have to mention before I wrap up... Joe (if he ever reads this) was the most incredible host. He spoiled me completely rotten and will be horrified that I am glorifying him on the internet. So all I will say is, if he ever needs anything, I am in debt forever and ever. My love affair with the city of New York is still pretty fiery, and I think it may only take a few warm days there to lure me in for a longer stay. What I had planned on being the world’s longest layover, turned out to be an amazing leg of our trip (mostly thanks to Joe and all the cupcakes). Success!

I was a horrible picture taker in NYC, and regetfully took NO pictures with Joe or Shannon! (Boo on me) But this was a great view from the park!

Monday, February 28th – Priority tape, not to be confused with priority customers

Here begins the ever so long travel story of Kelly and Jenny from New York City to Guildford, England…

Jenny said her goodbyes to Shea and met Kelly at Joe’s to find Kel elbow deep in sweaters, shirts, bags, you name it, as she attempted to condense her luggage to mail the majority home. Well, parting with the majority was harder than Kelly had initially planned – the over packer is embedded deep inside of both of us so parting with a single t-shirt feels very difficult. Jenny decided this was a good time to make use of Joe’s kind offer to use his washer and dryer to do some of the laundry that she had been lugging around since Samara, hence the permanent Tica smell that Jenny now had. Laundry had never felt like such a joyous luxury! Kelly’s inner minimalist was able to shine through as she parted with 3 huge boxes of clothing.

The reorganizing of the luggage may be confusing to some of you – keep in mind when we left home we didn’t even have Europe in mind as a destination and had anticipated being in Costa Rica and then teaching at an unknown destination for up to a year. We had packed accordingly and brought every sundress, tank top, summer skirt and pair of shorts around. Adding Europe to the agenda added a slight complication: what would we wear? We are brave but not brave enough to stomp around in flip flops and dresses in freezing cold weather. NYC was decided as our layover and we planned to have warm clothes sent to us in exchange for our excess of summery items which we would send home (Jenny with the help of Shea and Kelly with the help of the post office).

Okay, now that we got that cleared up…back to our very exciting packing story! Joe came home from work early, we think more as an excuse for the rest of the day off than because we actually needed his help :) but we were very grateful nonetheless. Getting Kelly’s belongings to the post office, about 7 blocks away, was harder than we had initially anticipated. Joe packed her boxes inside of huge suitcases he had in his apartment so that we could get everything down the bustling NYC streets. After a stressful walk with every awkward box hitting the concrete at least twice, we arrived at the Post Office. This should be a quick and easy job we thought….uh, wrong! Have you ever been to Kinkos for a copy and everyone there seems to have never operated a printer before, let alone heard of a copy? Well this was kind of like that, except every employee was totally ridiculous and right out of an SNL skit. We looked everywhere for Ashton but are pretty sure that we weren’t being punked. First we had the wrong box…then the wrong tape…then the box had the wrong writing on it so we had to cover it up…but we used the wrong tape to do that…after taping and un-taping and re-taping what seemed like 100 times we finally had it right. But then it was wrong again so we had to buy bubble wrap, and wrap the box up in it, and put it in another box and tape that box too. This was overall a totally absurd experience and we never want to do so much as mail a letter ever again. The three of us were cracking up throughout which made the already un-amused post office staff even less amused. We left the post office after about an hour, fingers crossed that Kelly’s things would make it home. Who knew the post was such a complicated endeavor?!

Joe treated us to sushi, along with Melinda, after the post office fiasco. We were fully packed and wanted to leave plenty of time to get to the airport for our 10pm flight so we headed to dinner around 5:30. Planet Sushi was a weird place, but not as weird as the fish collar bone that Melinda ordered and insisted that we try. It actually wasn’t bad, although watching her peel the fins away from this giant fish bone brought back some pretty gross images of the giant teethed fish heads we discovered on our beach walks in Samara. After we were totally stuffed, with collar bone and every sushi roll we could order (Joe is a phenomenal guy to go to a restaurant with) we couldn’t image eating another bite. Until we walked outside and spotted Crumbs cupcakery and decided we needed 2 for the road. We bought Joe and Melinda one also - they needed a little convincing as they were starting an organic juice cleanse the following day…well, Melinda needed convincing, not so much Joe. Once we made our extremely important cupcake decisions we were ready to head to the airport.

We grabbed our bags (one each! A huge victory for us!) and headed down to the street to get in our car to the airport. We all exchanged hugs and we said our goodbyes to Joe and Melinda – literally thanking Joe until he told us both to shut up.

A million thanks to the lady at JFK who let us check our bags after wordlessly resetting the scales so they weighed in at 50lbs. We loved having so much time at the airport as it was our final goodbye to our phone service, and our time to savor our delicious cupcakes! Boarding our Virgin Atlantic flight felt like a flash back to flying in the 70’s with the well dressed and very cheerful flight attendants, and brightly colored carpets and seats...the difference would be the addition of tons of great on-flight movies on the personal screens. We settled in for a long flight and a short night of sleep. Even though we weren’t able to sit together for the next 7 hours (bummer), Virgin was pretty awesome… we might try to make use of the bars on the plane next time around...





Going Postal

Cheerio from Guildford - video

Saturday, February 26th - The Big Apple

Kelly’s Dad’s best friend Joe had an amazing apartment in the Upper West Side that he was letting Kelly stay in for the weekend while he stayed with his girlfriend – he was an unbelievably nice guy and had offered for Jenny and Shea to stay there on Saturday night so that we could all spend a day and evening out in NYC without having to trek back to our hotel. Seriously – he is one of the nicest people we have ever crossed paths with and the three of us are eternally grateful for his hospitality and kindness! As planned at dinner on Friday (Joe and Melinda, his girlfriend, had taken Kelly Jenny and Shea to a delicious meal at a great hidden spot with no name in The Village) Shea and Jenny headed to Joe’s in the a.m. and dropped off some stuff to stay there overnight. We said goodbye to Joe after thanking him as many times as we could and headed to breakfast at Joe’s favorite diner, where we ran into his daughter, Shannon and her boyfriend Greg. We all sat together and really enjoyed each others company over an absolutely delicious breakfast – just in the nick of time as Jenny is less than a ray of sunshine when she is hungry. We are sure you all know the stereotype of New Yorker’s as less than friendly but we could not argue this point more! Between Joe and his girlfriend, and Shannon and Greg these are some of the nicest and most genuine people you can find anywhere in the world! They would fit in perfectly in kind-hearted Samara!

After our breakfast we parted ways and Kelly Jenny and Shea decided to head to China Town and make the long walk back to the Upper West side so that we could take in an array of sights. Kelly used her unbelievably useful iphone app, HopStop which routes your subway trains for you if you enter your desired destination. Jenny was once again infuriated with how useless her blackberry had been this trip and how much she hated Verizon. The Verizon thing has been going on for a while now and our guest blogger, Jenny’s mom, was kind enough to leave Jenny’s angry Verizon rant out of her entry. P.S. Dear Keith from Verizon, you should be fired, no seriously! And so should your colleague who put you on the phone after I specifically asked not to speak to you! Anyway, Kelly’s iphone saved the day and we outsmarted the NYC subway system and found ourselves a few blocks from China Town and in front of an awesome Maserati dealership. Jenny jokingly posed with a gorgeous Maserati parked out front and she and Kelly were offered a ride by the owner – which made Shea (who worries about the two of us country hopping alone) roll his eyes and he was less than amused by how tempted we were to hop in the car. Juuust kidding everyone, we have seen Taken, we know, we know!

Anyway, we continued our walk to China Town. Boys, in case you didn’t know China Town is fake purse heaven and has tons of super sketchy back rooms hidden underground or behind removable wall panels where all the best bags are kept. We had hoped to find one of these shady bag heavens but we were disappointed by the few and far between whispers of “you want bag?” that came our way. We continued our enjoyable loop around China Town stopping in little stands and assessing the fakes on display. All of a sudden in the midst of small stand after stand crammed full of random items we were in front of a Verizon store. With a little encouragement Jenny agreed to go in and sort her bill out (that Keith in the Cincinnati store had spent 4 hours incorrectly setting up). Not sure what kind of magic that wonderful China Town Verizon store held but Jenny and Shea both left shortly after we entered loving Verizon and with new iphone 4’s in hand – talk about an upgrade. We continued our walk popping into store after store and staring at all of the things we would love to buy if we had the money. We talked about the advantages of having an entirely new and outstanding wardrobe and weighed the pros and cons of a mass shopping spree with our planned travels. Luckily the boy in tow was now fully occupied with his new gadget and was not at all phased as we tried on various shoes, dresses, hats, etc. We managed to leave every store without making a single purchase, not easy for the duo that is Kelly and Jenny.

On we walked until we came across a totally random costume store (not the inappropriate kind) that was absolutely packed with every kind of themed costume you could imagine: aliens, monsters, pigs, birds, police officers, royalty, jungle animals, a zombie version of Sarah Palin…the random list continues, and this store was enormous! We managed to snap a few epic pics before a scary employee cracked down and yelled at us for taking pictures with the merchandise. What a buzzkill, especially as we were suited up to take the most epic picture masked as a chick (Jenny) a cow (Kelly) and a pig (Shea). Shea and Kelly convinced Jenny to stop pushing her luck and get over the picture (bummer since it would have been an epic photo!) so we reluctantly ended our fun in the costume store and continued on our way. It was 7pm when we made it back to Joe’s and we had made plans to meet up with Jenny’s cousin Bryce and his new wife Cait at Amsterdam Ale House at 9pm. Shea earned his keep by serving as our bartender as we got ready for our night. Amsterdam Ale House was the spot for delicious fried appetizers and pitchers – pretty much a dream combination in our minds! We all felt like a hundred bucks after our mix and match plates of mac’n’cheese bites, nachos and fried chicken (even writing this entry is making out mouths water and our lips quiver).

It was so great to see Bryce and Cait and catch up with them both! After parting ways with them we made a terrible choice: to head back to Joe’s for a pregame cocktail before making our way to Pub City for our night on the town. This quick cocktail turned into a classic Jenny and Kelly heart to heart (God, poor Shea – what a trooper). It wasn’t until well over an hour later that the three of us left Joe’s and started weaving up to Pub City. We had a great time sipping on Stella’s and going from pub to pub, surprised to find that none were particularly crowded. We got back to Joe’s at 4am for a quick snack of a peanut butter sandwich (thanks Joe!) before falling asleep all dreading the inevitable headaches we would have tomorrow.

We woke up on Sunday, correct about our headache predictions, for a delicious midmorning brunch at a local spot with Joe, Melinda, Shannon and Greg. They really are the best kind of people you can come by and we are so happy they let us spend time with them in NYC.



costume store fun


iphone addicts already