‘The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere elsewhere have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
– John Updike

Since we had previous travel plans (understandably) disrupted, we decided to go to New York instead–theoretically in honor of my 30th birthday, but in fact mostly because I just really, really wanted to visit my best friend and surrogate older sister. It was a three day jaunt that was over too soon, but was very much needed.

X lives in the Upper East Side with two hilarious cats that provided the majority of our at-home entertainment (I now want a cat in spite of a mild allergy) and generously provided our base of operations. The goal was to see the “real” New York as both Jeff and I had only ever seen the moderately touristy bits and what fun is that?

In fact, the only moderately touristy thing we did was the Met, due largely to our shared love of museums. Everything else was wandering the city with a native guide, a girls’ day whilst Jeff met up with an old university flatmate, dinner with a good friend and her husband, an unholy binge of a Sephora excursion, second hand shopping, and more food.

My favorite girl in front of one of my favorite paintings.

It’s hard to be away from friends and family. On our recent trip to Utah a friend asked what I missed most about the States and without any hesitation my response was, “My people. Friends.” Growing up as we did, I think my family and I are used to the notion of kin being distant and, while not being easy, it’s certainly manageable. I don’t feel particularly distant from them or their affection, which sounds odd but by which I mean I feel very secure in those relationships. I have a harder time with the fact that my best friends live in massively different time zones and small things like phone calls require pretty significant coordination. My friendships really feed me and keep me balanced–shout out to Katarina who gave me one of the most useful external party insights to my character I’ve ever received recently–and while I have close, close friends here in London, I miss the girls with whom I literally came of age. Over and over again.

 

I also forgot what unrelenting sunlight felt like, as a side note. New York was blazing!

Reader, I ate it. What, you ask? Everything.

The benefit of having a local guide is that you get a first hand introduction to the best eats. Apparently Midtown Bagels East is something of an institution which I can enthusiastically endorse as a reputation earned. According to X, the queue at the weekend is ridiculous. We, savvy tourists that we were, went on a weekday.

She also has the best recommendations for the weird and wacky shops for planning your next gallery wall.

One of my favorite excursions was to the justly famous Bite Lip Lab where we were able to make custom lipsticks. A pair of self-proclaimed lippy fanatics, this was closer to a pilgrimage, really. Pricey. Worth it. Expect a full post on this in its own right.

To be honest, before this trip, I didn’t really “get” New York. I have never romanticized it the way a lot of people do (hell, I didn’t even romanticize London so much as I just knew in my bones it was where I wanted to live), and I’ve always rather thought it was overhyped. Well, I still might not love it as much as London, but I finally get some of the appeal. It’s fast, it’s awake, and it’s almost a minor world in its own right in terms of what you can see and do. I have no idea if we’ll get to “try it out” someday as a home or a regular haunt, but I’m far more open to the idea now.

X lives close to Central Park (her life is a trial, truly) and we took full advantage–prior to it being overrun by Pokemon Go enthusiasts. The view was…not bad.

We ended our visit in Brooklyn at the pizza joint reputed to be Beyonce’s favorite. It’s like she’s known me for 17 years, or something.

Pretty sure we’ll be back.