I Want To Wake Up In a City That Doesn't Sleep

In August, Chris and I took our first vacation together in over a year and a half. Summer baseball season finally slowed down for Chris so we made the last minute decision to take a trip to NYC and New Jersey before Fall baseball started up in September.

We flew into Newark, NJ and Chris's best friend picked us up and we went to the Jersey Shore and stayed in their beach house. The house was right on the water and even though the water was pretty chilly, the weather was perfect for relaxing on the beach. We lounged most of the time we were there and we even hit up the boardwalk one night where we ate the BIGGEST pizza ever (they call it pizza pie). We also visited our favorite MTV Jersey Shore spots like the Shore Store (the tshirt shop) and the Jersey Shore house where the cast lived for two seasons. We drove by their favorite club, Karma, and planned to check it out the next night but due to Hurricane Irene, we decided to leave the shore and head to NYC before getting caught in all the evacuation traffic.

I haven't ever been to New York and since Chris grew up there I was SO excited to check it out. Our hotel was in the heart of Times Square so we were in the middle of all the action. We spent most of our time in NYC walking around  through Central Park, the Harbor, Greenwich Village, Midtown, Chinatown, etc. We ate at a different diner for lunch every day and usually had pizza for dinner. For some reason being in NYC made us both crave breakfast food (french toast for Chris and pancakes for me) and pizza. One night Chris's best friend and his wife went out for dinner with us to an Italian family-style restaurant. We had SO much food and sadly a lot of it went to waste because we didn't have a place to put it in our hotel room.

Thanks to Hurricane Irene, our flight was rescheduled two days after we were supposed to fly home. The weather never really got bad where we were, just some rain and wind, so we were able to enjoy ourselves. When the hurricane came through we watched movies in bed and had a "Hurricane Pizza" delivered for dinner. We decided to spend our extra two days of vacation visiting with Chris's aunt, uncle, and cousins on Long Island. Luckily his grandparents from Florida were visiting for the summer so we were able to have a great time with them. Chris took me to one of the towns he grew up in and we saw his school, the little league baseball fields that he played at, and we even ate pizza (surprise surprise) at a cute little pizza place where he used to go with his baseball team after their games. After that we went with his grandparents to Port Jeff, a really cute town on the north side of Long Island where the ferry runs to and from Connecticut. Next time we go to NYC, I would love to spend at least a night in Port Jeff.

I was very sad to go back home...I really loved New York and wish we could have stayed longer. But of course once we came home to all the wagging tails and dog kisses, I was happy to be back.

Side note...thank you so much to my parents and our neighbors/friends Casey and Shannon for helping us out with the dogs!! It's so nice knowing they are in good hands :)

Here are a few pics from a fabulous vacation:

That's a giant pizza pie!

The view from our hotel room!

You can't visit the Jersey Shore house and NOT fistpump!