It was about a 4 hour rainy Greyhound ride from DC to New York. Melody’s apartment was supposed to only a 15 minute walk from the bus station, and it was only drizzling, so we decided to walk it. Unfortunately Google Maps was not working correctly on my phone, and it led us in the wrong direction twice! We walked in circles for almost 45 minutes with our heavy backpacks in the rain until we finally arrived.
We eventually made it, albeit sopping wet. We got to meet Melody’s boyfriend David for the first time, and we all decided to order a classic NY pizza. Melody placed the order on Uber Eats, but the app didn’t update for almost 45 minutes, so we weren’t sure if it was actually on its way. Melody called Uber Eats to explain the situation and cancel the order, and we headed to an Italian restaurant just up the street called Norma, where we ordered pizza to go.
Norma said the pizzas would be about 45 minutes, we headed back to Melody’s place to wait. To our surprise, the doorman handed us two gigantic pizzas from the first place. David rushed back to Norma to try to cancel our order, but they had apparently already started making it so he came back with another huge batch of pizza. Whoops! We dug into the absurd amount of pizza, and spent the evening eating, getting to know David, and catching up with Melody. It had been almost 2 years since I’d seen her!
Melody and David ruined my life by alerting me to the fact that Insomnia Cookies was right around the corner. How could I resist that? Talk about tempting a Triple Chocolate Chunk addict!
The next morning was Sunday so Melody didn’t have to work. It was still raining, so we decided to have a very lazy day at the apartment. We ate leftover pizza, and watched our favourite movie as kids – The Parent Trap.
One of my best friends from my time in Denver, Raquel, had since moved to Manhattan as well, so we invited her over to catch up. We chatted all afternoon, and she is absolutely living her best life in NYC! I hadn’t seen her in almost 3 years, so I was so happy that the schedule worked out and we could see each other!
I cooked Taiwanese Rouzao (braised minced pork) for dinner, and we chatted the night away!
The next day was yet another rainy day in the city, but Melody and I did take a stroll down to the nearby Apple Store to check out the new iPhone 15 that had just dropped. Melody ordered us dinner from a DELICIOUS noodle and soup dumpling restaurant called Kung Fu Little Steamed Buns. We had to take this opportunity in NYC to get our Taiwanese food fix in!
That next morning, Melody took us to her neighbourhood bagel shop to try some authentic NY bagels. They really are elite.
That afternoon, I randomly saw on Instagram that my friend Nina who lives in Japan happened to also be in NYC! We met in high school and hadn’t seen each other since 2016, so we made plans to catch up at dinner. She has since gotten married and is waiting on her visa to process to come live with her husband in the US! Although we didn’t have too much time together, it was such a coincidence that we were both in town at the same time and I’m so happy I got to see her!
We only had two goals for New York: see a Broadway show and eat bagels. I’d seen Broadway shows before, but only touring productions in HK and Taiwan. Never in NYC!
Melody booked the 4 of us tickets to go see Hadestown, a newish Broadway show that tells the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice, a young girl looking for something to eat, goes to work in a hellish industrial version of the Greek underworld to escape poverty and the cold, and her poor singer-songwriter lover Orpheus comes to attempt to rescue her.
The show was great, but I found Orpheus’ voice to be kind of annoying and got the ick. Even more annoying, there was a theatre geek sat next to us that was overly animated, singing along, being so distracting and waving his arms all around. He apparently didn’t believe in wearing deodorant (and trust me he needed to be), and sitting next to him felt like being sat next to somebody on the Friends laugh track. A bit much. Regardless, it was still an amazing show!
The next day was our last day in the city before heading out an east coast road trip through Vermont and New Hampshire with my friend Alida! We spent the day running errands, picking up food for our trip, and enjoying the city. It finally stopped raining, so we took the opportunity to take an afternoon stroll through Central Park.
That evening, we met up with another friend of mine that lives in NYC, Justine. We’ve known each other since we were babies and grew up in Taiwan together, so obviously we chose a Taiwanese place for dinner. I ordered the beef noodle soup and it was absolutely fire.
Although we had pretty terrible weather the entire time we were in NYC, we had the best time! We had both been to New York as tourists before, so we were stoked to just have time to see friends, enjoy family time, and relax.
