July 2021: What do you call a prologue that takes place in the middle of the story?

July has been shaping up to a month with plenty to blog about, and in order to trim down the main post, I’m making this post about last week now. Call it a return to blogging in a timely matter or a late birthday present to my sister, but here’s some stuff that happened when Cory, Blake and Rachel were in New York last week.

JULY 20: Things got off to an excellent start when we met up for a lunch of burgers, bacon, and tomato & onion salad at Peter Luger’s. Followed that up with a little walking around Williamsburg before taking the train back to Manhattan for a visit to Chelsea Market, Little Island, a walk up the Highline, time at Hudson Yards that included beverages at Shake Shack and buying a suit for Blake at Suit Supply, then a walk over to B&H Photo for a look around (preceded with a visit to a lemon grove and the new train station), then a walk up to Times Square for dinner at Tacos No 1 and dessert at Shmackery’s. You may notice that the photos stop after Little Island. Weird, right? Guess I was just living in the moment and also starting to get tired of walking and taking pictures of everything.

JULY 21: I met up with Blake and Rachel in Soho and we went in and out of a lot of stores. The Soho Zara was closed for some reason and this was clearly ruining a lot of trips to Soho. But we survived. After a while Cory snuck up from work stuff and he and Blake ate gluten-free cupcakes while Rachel waited patiently to be reunited with Prince Street Pizza pizza. Then she and I walked around Chinatown while Blake and Cory ate gluten free pizza. After we were all reunited, Cory ran off to a work dinner and Blake and Rachel went back to their hotel and I went to Festus’s birthday party (but that’s content for the forthcoming main July post).

JULY 22: Rachel had come to New York in hopes of eating a bagel, so I had her and Blake meet up with me at Absolute Bagels by Columbia. I believe it was a bagel success? Blake needed to eat, too, so at Mom’s suggestion I took him to a street meat stand for some chicken and lamb and rice. Rachel was understandably skeptical but it was a giant hit with Blake. Then we walked by Grant’s Tomb, through Columbia campus, visited the reclining Statue of Liberty in Morningside Park, and THEN walked all the way down to Sheeps Meadow, through and along Central Park.

BUT at that point we weren’t even nearly done walking! Because we needed to get down to Times Square before 3:30 to see the Instructure lights in Times Square. Signs seen, we: ate really good gluten free pizza, walked over to Rockefeller Center, used bathrooms, walked up 5th Avenue, found a Zara that was open, went down into the Apple Store, went and got street meat for everyone from the Halal Guys, went and got Rachel some Magnolia Bakery banana pudding, and then went back to Shmackery’s. It was a huge walking day and I actually tied Tuesday exactly on exact number of steps stepped.

Teenagers: Only way to get them off their phones is to put some other phones in front of them!

This Security Guard was constantly having to keep people off the VERY sittable Apple Store skylights

See?!

JULY 23: While Cory, Blake and Rachel were still in the city for a bit on Friday I wasn’t able to meet up with them as I had a bus to catch to Philadelphia and miles and miles of walking to to recover from before I put in a few Philadelphia miles. But what a great visit! It was grand to get to put in some uncle time with my oldest niece and nephew. I hope they left feeling they saw a thing or two and ate a few good things, too.