I was fortunate last week to go to Washington D.C. and New York for a semi-short vacation. With the fun companionship of Denise, we had a good time of sightseeing and eating. I could show you the landmarks and other famous sights, but that's too typical. Denise has pictures of the sites we saw, so visit her site! Come see me if you want to see other pictures, but for now, I recap our trip based on food =D But first, here is the first picture of Denise and me at the airport, ready to embark on a weeklong vacation.
Saturday in D.C. for lunch, we went to a Thai restaurant. Yum! I had the spicy eggplant pictured here.
When lunch was over, we went to Pentagon City Mall where Lo and Nathan allowed me to pick out a graduation gift (thanks!!!!) and Denise marveled at the size of the Forever 21 store. Did you know there was a mens' department at XXI? Afterwards, we headed back to the Ebs' apartment where I saw the gorgeous and huge wedding album I'd been waiting to see. Good job by their photographer! Some game playing and world cup soccer rounded out the afternoon.
For dinner, we went to a Korean BBQ place - all you can eat! In addition to some prepared chinese buffet dishes, there is much meat to enjoy! I was too busy eating to take many pictures, but here are two of the meat cooking.
After dinner, we headed back to Lorene and Nathan's apartment (so nicely decorated!) for homemade mango sorbet and games.
Sunday was the day we went to New York. A four+ hour bus ride from D.C., we ended up in the heart of New York's chinatown district. Although Denise and I both thought we had a place in mind for a meal, it was hard to find and given our heavy luggage, we settled on a restaurant that served simple chinese food. I had a won-ton mein soup for about $4. Good stuff, but no pictures.
After refeuling, Denise and I wandered around Chinatown and ended up in Little Italy. Some shopping was completed, along with a pit stop for some pistachio gelato. Yum! 
Finding our way to the hotel was a little tricky with the New York Subway System, but we soon figured it out, and arrived at the Roosevelt Hotel to check in. It's a nice hotel, and since our room was on the top floor, I was expecting something pretty good. To our surprise though, the room was quite small and there was one double bed for the two of us. But we were grateful to have a clean and otherwise good room in New York for a good price. We rested for a little bit, then went in search of food at Times Square.
The bright lights of Times Square were one of my favorite parts of New York. I know it's touristy and commercial, but it's cool. For dinner, we went to Planet Hollywood where I had a mushroom, onion, and swiss burger. Denise had a philly cheesesteak pizza and a bananarama smoothie.
Monday was a full day of seeing the New York sights. A quick breakfast near Grand Central Station gave us energy before taking the Staten Island Ferry. Unfortunately, the rain prevented me from taking some truly spetacular shots, but a free ride pass the Statue of Liberty is not to be missed!
The following pictures are of Katz's Deli, our stop for lunch. This is the deli where a certain scene from When Harry Met Sally was filmed. Pastrami sandwich...delicious!
After lunch, it was back to search for the "touristy" part of Chinatown, but that failed so we just ended up going through Little Italy again. At that point, around 4:00, we decided to go to Central Park, since it was still light, so we took the subway up to the stop we gauged to be close. Upon exiting the station however, we saw Bloomingdale's! Not that we expected to buy anything, but it was worth a look. Plus, there was a place for dessert nearby, so we stuck around and looked around. I had a goal to try on a $1000 outfit, but didn't find anything I really liked.
Around 5:30, I figured we should go to Serendipity's to see if it was crowded. It took a little walk to find it, but once we did, we were told it would be a 2 hour wait. This gave us time to eat dinner, so back to Bloomingdale's for a bowl of soup and to rest our feet.
Serenditpity's was well worth the wait! The wait ended up actually being just a little over an hour and although I knew what I wanted, I looked at the menus, which were huge!   Denise and I both ordered a frozen hot chocolate and some fries =D The frozen hot chocolates were sooo good! If you're ever in New York, definitely a good dessert splurge! They're huge, so sharing one would work too, depending how hungry you are.   It comes in a big bowl, covered with whip cream and chocolate shavings. It tastes like hot chocolate with marshmallows, but in the consistency of a frappucchino. Drink through a straw or use the spoon provided, either way, it's yummy.
 One last picture of Denise and me outside the shop. If you're not looking for Serendipity's, you might miss it!
Tuesday was our last day in New York. A morning trip to Macy's Herald Square, supposedly the largest department store in the world, yielded nothing but two hungry people. Being in New York, I wanted to eat a hot dog and could have eaten one at any point from a hot dog vendor. But I had read about a place called Gray's Papaya that was one of the best. It proved to be difficult to find, but once we did, it was well worth it! For $2.75, Denise and I both ordered the "Recession Special": 2 hot dogs and a papaya juice (other drinks available).
The outside of the building The two hotdogs with sauerkraut and some sauce.
Denise and I finished lunch and headed down to Wall St. after lunch, where we saw the NYSE and the Trump Building, not to be confused with Trump Towers. After finding nothing else we needed to see, we headed back to the hotel to relax. I watched some World Cup action in the hotel's bar are while Denise did more shopping. We finished off our trip to NY with a taxi ride to the bus stop.
Back in Washington D.C. on Wednesday morning, Christy and Dave cooked breakfast for the four of us. It ended up being our lunch, but was still good.
After lunch, Dave drove into D.C. for a tour of the monuments. It was quite humid, but thankfully not raining, as we saw the Lincoln, Vietnam, Korean, WWI, and WWII Memorials and the Washington Monument. As we left D.C., we also managed to see the Capitol building and the White House from afar. Dave then dropped me off at Lorene and Nathan's apartment while the three of them went to the jazz club.
For dinner, Lorene and Nathan took me to Joe's Place, an Italian restaurant that has a buffet for $6.99! Good simple Italian food, very filling! They had other food too, but buffets are my favorite =D
I had a good evening with my sister and Nathan - besides being unceremoniously being dumped on the floor. It's okay Nathan...I know I'm vertically challenged. On this trip, I think I now realize why the west coast sports teams don't get respect - it is pretty late to stay up to listen to an entire game that starts at 10P.M. The Giants did win the two games I listened to over the Internet. I would love to move to the east coast, but leaving the Giants -a big thing - but not as much as leaving my friends. Tough!
Thursday, we went to lunch at a pho restaurant then went to the airport for our flights home. Our flight was delayed 2 hours which caused us to miss the connecting flight in Chicago. There was a fear that we wouldn't catch a flight back to CA until Friday morning, but thankfully we got seats on the last flight back to San Jose. Had we been stuck in Chicago, American Airlines would have paid for our stay and I would have loved to explore the city a little. Arriving at 11:00P.M. as opposed to 7:45 wasn't ideal, but at least we were home!
One note, for all you coffee afficianados, I thought there were a lot Starbucks here in the Bay Area, but Manhattan seriously has one just about every block. If I had thought about it before, I would have taken a tally, but here is one in Times Square.
Thank you Lorene and Nathan for letting me stay at your place. I hope I didn't keep you up!
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