Jess came out to visit NYC in the middle of September. She somehow managed to get a break in her crazy life to hangout here in the big city. With a little bit of effort, I was able to get three days in a row off of work so we could have a lot of fun. It had been over four months since I had seen any member of my family, and I was really glad to have a chance to hang out with her and find out how her life has been going.
She showed up on Friday night and cooked us dinner (yea, we were all surprised). After dinner, Jess and I decided to go out on the town and see the sights. The San Genaro festival was going on down in Little Italy and I thought I read somewhere that there was a Sausage eating contest at 2 AM. So we decided to make the trek downtown (over thirty min on the subway) to see this impending spectacle. Well it turns out that I was wrong (in hindsight this was fairly obvious), but the eating contest took place during the day, not at night. But what the heck, we were down there, so we went out. We bar hopped our way north till we ended up at a late night dinner.
Jess was keeping her eye on the strange late night clientele. We soon jumped in a cab and got home at about 4pm! It was a long funny night.
Next day we decided that because we missed the San Genaro Festival the night before, we were going to go down, get some pizza at Lombardi's (the best in the city) and wander the crazy booths of the yearly Little Italy festival. You can't really tell but there is a parade behind her.
Lot's of people go to this once a year thing. Basically it's your normal county fair type stuff. Rigged ring toss booths and funnel cakes. But they sell these specialty sausages that are HUGE, and good, and you can only get them once a year. Reason enough to fight the crowds!
On Sunday we had a Mets game to get to. This is a picture down in the subway. Just after this, as we were entering the stadium, we got to experience a fine moment from the NYPD: cops yelling taunts on a bullhorn at the opposing team fans.
About a week before Jess came to visit I decided that I really wanted to take her and Molly to a Mets game. It had been a while since we had gone to Queens for a game, so I bought some tickets. Last time, I bought some on the upper deck, way in the back, right behind home plate and it ended up being so cold that we had to move to the outfield. So this time I decided that I would shell out some cash and get seats on the lower level, but in the outfield, in the sun. Well what I didn't realize was the the only seats left were up against a chain link fence under the middle deck. Without a problem we were able to touch the floor of the level above, and we could not even see the first base dugout. These were bad seats.
What a view! We had to hope that every ball hit was a grounder or we could not see it. Oh, and this spot was a wind tunnel. It sucked, and everyone let me know it.
We moved to the upper deck by the second inning. Aaaahhh, the space was great.
LOOK! The field!
It was still kind of a chilly day, Molly couldn't figure out if she needed a sweater or not. I think this is her with sweater?
The standard parking lot picture. It was nice to get out of the tall buildings for a while though.
On Monday, Molly had to work, so it was Jess and I out by ourselves. We decided to walk the Upper East Side. All of it! We walked over 150 city blocks, not sure how many miles that is, but its a lot. Here we are with a giant M&M. With Jess this seems normal?
At some point we had coffee in some strange tea shop. They had the most dainty coffee cups that I have ever drank out of, along with the smallest tables. But, a plus was our own coffee pot.
Aaahh, you can take us kids out of the mountains, but you can't teach us manners!
We had a great time over the weekend, hanging out and talking. Jess has really turned into a very funny kid, and just getting time to spend with my little sister made my days here in NYC a lot more fun.
Aaahh, you can take us kids out of the mountains, but you can't teach us manners!
We had a great time over the weekend, hanging out and talking. Jess has really turned into a very funny kid, and just getting time to spend with my little sister made my days here in NYC a lot more fun. 
