Big City, Southern Biddies

This year I along with two of my best friends, Anna and Michelle, celebrated our first ever FRIENDSGIVING! Because all of our close friends are at different points in their life and spread out all across the east coast we thought it'd be cool to spend Thanksgiving together in New York City! We were all super excited about it and I started packing weeks in advance which I know is overzealous, but when packing for a weekend I struggle finding a balance between packing the bare necessities and "I'll definitely need 4 fur vests for a 3 day trip". Next thing you know my check bag weighs 65 pounds and I'm calling Michelle the night before we leave so she can talk me out of bringing the 12 scarves I have in my carryon.

We left on Wednesday and naturally there was a plethora of flight delays that pushed mine and Anna's ETA back about 5 hours but as long as we got there that was cool with me. That just meant I got to spend more time people watching in the airport. Score! I swear I will never understand the process some people go through when they are deciding what to wear on a plane. I mean, they act like the airport is some magical place where no one else has eyes and it is completely acceptable for them to where kitten heels with sweatpants. For those of you reading this and wondering...its not ok.

But, after 8 hours of traveling, spending 2 hours trying to find Anna in JFK, an almost near death experience on an AirTrain and an hour subway ride at one in the morning we arrived at our destination. I knew we were in for an interesting trip. Not only because we were in a city where having a southern accent is the equivalent of having a baby arm protruding from your forehead, but we were spending the first 2 nights of our journey in a hostel.

Now I'm not saying the hostel was bad, its just a place you'd never want to walk around barefoot and I'm almost positive we slept on child sized bunk beds with yoga mat mattresses. We met interesting people and were able to take hot showers which is important...I only wish some of the other inhabitants shared the same appreciation for soap and water. Also, there was always really loud music playing and when I say always I mean ALWAYS. I guess most would consider it a perk of having the room on the first floor of a five story walk up but I personally almost never want to hear Dave Matthews playing at maximum volume especially at 4:30 in the morning. Overall it was cool though. I would post pictures but some things aren't worth giving your mother a heart attack over. All that matters is that we are alive, right?

Running off of 3 hours of sleep we woke up super early to fulfill our childhood dreams of watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was great. I had Snoopy on my mind all morning until I stepped off the subway and the FIRST face I saw was none other than Nigel Barker! If you are sitting there wondering who the hell I'm talking about you should really step up your reality television game. Mr. Barker, or Nigel as I like to refer to him, is the tall, beautiful, British, photographer judge from America's Next Top Model so naturally seeing him made floating cartoon dogs semi-irrelevant. We exchanged words and he smiled at me twice so we're basically friends now.     *flips hair*

Oh, and we had matching shirts.

From there the days were a blur. Michelle had volunteered to plan all of the daytime activities and  our days started early and were nonstop. I on the other hand was in charge of all the nighttime festivities. Even though she didn't come equipped with a landmarked map (with a legend) laying out all of the bars, their specials and what they are known for (food, drink prices, men in uniform, etc.) as I had done, she did a pretty good job navigating us through all of the touristy stuff. I got to "meet" my idol (Mrs. Beyoncé Giselle Knowles Carter) at the wax museum, we were given a tour of Rockefeller Center by a certified wackadoodle doo, rode on a water taxi that served booze and even got to hangout with a "famous" music producer who actually turned out to be a creepasaurus rex who lived above the bar we were in and dabbled in recreational narcotics...and that was only day one!

I know you're probably thinking, "Wow, those girls were out there owning that city and my gosh aren't they attractive!" which is only half true. We thought we were dominating city life until a mishap with the subway system put a damper on our confidence. By day two were mostly like "yeah, that'll probably get us where we need to go...let's take this train" and that had worked for us until we were trying to get home from a bar in Chelsea (not drunk). We took some color train that sounded right until we had been riding for what seemed like a very long time and it went from stopping at numbered streets to street names that didn't sound familiar at all. Because we are cool, calm and collected we freaked out and got off the train praying we were only a block or two from our place only to get to the street to find that we had made a detour to Harlem. Now considering I had been begging Michelle and Anna to make a stop in Harlem to see The Apollo and other historic venues you'd think I'd be thrilled but this extremely quiet, armored window part of the neighborhood wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Nothing against Harlem itself, I just assume it looks better in the daytime and I would just rather not be in any poorly lit part of town after spending the day wearing boots that were NOT made for walking. At that point in time the mere thought of having to run from anyone/anything made my knees hurt. Plus, I knew if anything were to go down it would be up to me to be the hero and I was too tired to be Olivia Benson. Thankfully we made it home safe and sound thanks to the help of an extremely inappropriate security guard who insisted we each give him a hug and kiss. Nope!

As sad as we were to leave behind our sleep away camp nightmare, the following day our prayers were answered and we were able to move our things to a loft on the Lower East Side that is operated by the college Michelle and I graduated from. Sooooo nice! Only set back was that our check out and check in times conflicted and we had a few hours to kill. This meant that wherever we went our luggage went with us. Originally we had planned to drag our things (and I literally mean drag) to be in the crowd at The TODAY Show so I could possibly embarrass my mother on national television but when we arrived to find that 1,000 other people had the same idea, most of whom were middle aged Matt Lauer groupies, we decided to go to the top of The Empire State Building instead.

That's right people...we took all of our belongings to the top of the city. While it was as inconvenient as it was embarrassing, how many people can say that their cutest winter ensembles have been 86 floors above Manhattan?

We did just about every sightseeing/tourist activity imaginable but my favorite adventure would have to be our visit to Chinatown. I felt like Dorothy when she first got to The Emerald City. Hundreds of people a foot or more shorter than me running around offering to give me almost luxurious items. As soon as we stepped onto Canal St. a tiny woman bundled up like Yukon Cornelius popped out of nowhere and started whispering, "Michael Kors? Louis Vuitton? Gucci? Pradaaaa? Whatever you like we have, ok?" She kept signaling for us to go with her and I could tell Michelle and Anna were thinking "Nah" but I grabbed them and next thing they knew we are chasing the fastest walker I had ever seen through a jungle of handbags and sparkly knockoffs. She led us to a quiet sidewalk between two buildings and told me to stand behind a potted bush.

Now, I use the term bush loosely because this wasn't anything close to it. She told my big ass to wait behind Charlie Brown's Christmas tree while her, Snoopy and Woodstock rummaged through their trunk to find "Bootafull handbag make look nice". Aside from their poor waiting area I was actually pretty impressed with their system. I had handbags and watches coming at me left and right and if I inquired about something they didn't have they would simply whip out their flip phone and in seconds another lady would appear with the exact item behind the tree. Michelle even had a woman try to sell her sunglasses without speaking a word, moving only her eyebrows and motioning to a plastic bag with her various facial expressions. It was both entertaining and incredibly uncomfortable.

Our last day was pretty relaxing. We got really nerdy and visited lots of museums, ate street pretzels and almost accidentally became the pigeon lady from Home Alone after dropping pieces of said pretzels, had a nice dinner and were almost "Taken" and traded into European sex trafficking!

We decided to visit this cool rooftop bar that provided plush red robes for you to wear if you were cold (we obviously took advantage of the photo op) and they had some famous DJ we had never heard of playing on the main level. We didn't plan on staying long but we met a group of guys from Liverpool (not the sex traffickers) and they convinced us to be their best friends. However, we were briefly separated from our Brits and this slob kabob made his way over to our table. We were instantly creeped out as he kept trying to convince us to go with him to the Meatpacking District.
Bye Felicia!

I noticed that he kept wandering around by himself most likely trying to spit the same line to other dumb biddies. Later we were reunited with our friends and a small man with frosted tips approached Michelle and told her to go with him to the Meatpacking District. Weird, right? All red flags start to go up and I notice he keeps looking back at a table full of fat, old men who have their sweater vests tucked into their jeans. Turns out these are Dutch "businessmen" who "trying to make new friends with beautiful ladies". I called bullshit. Towards the end of the night the same Tinkerbelle man came over for one last plea for us to PLEASE go with the group of men. At this point I had words with  the little man and I'm not going to say what words I used but most of them started with "F" and apparently that word is universal regardless of your native language because he immediately vanished.

Overall we couldn't have asked for a better experience. I never thought I would enjoy NYC as much as I did but the city has an energy that is unlike anything I have ever experienced. While there were some who could obviously tell we were newbies and tried to bamboozle us, we met some awesome people and made a lot of friends who saw past our RBF (resting bitch faces) and showed us a great time. Shout out to the Irish waiter who is destined to marry Anna, the guys from the Bronx who were the four best, closest friends anyone could have (one of whom is a uber talented recording artist who can saaaaaang, honey) and our British dudes who showed us how a man should really dress...you're the real MVP's.

We love New York...and shortly after my mother reads this I'm sure she will be against us ever going back there again.


Yolo, Mom.