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I visited Tom, Terry, and Devon in New York with Kelby and Nathan last weekend, and we had a great time. Great tastes, brilliant nightlife, and excellent company led to a fantastic weekend. Tom’s company putting him up in an extended-stay hotel was the primary impetus for the trip, but it was great to see Devon and Terry, and hopefully it won’t be long before I’m back.

Friday

Kelby and I flew out of Moline Friday morning. It happened that Kelly was on the same flight, en route to Boston to start the new semester (Not at Tufts…). Unluckily, takeoff was delayed by over seventy minutes from our scheduled departure time by “air traffic delays.” Our layover in Chicago was scheduled for ninety minutes, so making our connection was going to be pushing things, but Kelly was still on the ground in Moline when her scheduled connection took off from O’Hare.

Upon landing in Chicago, Kelby and I sprint-walked from the F concourse to B-22, where we discovered that our connection flight was delayed as well. Of course, they kept pushing the departure time back in fifteen minute increments, meaning we didn’t feel we could safely go get anything to eat. We certainly had time, if United had been honest with us, but of course that’s just far too much to ask. In the end, I had only an orange to eat between waking up in Moline at 9:00 a.m. and landing in New York at 6:45 p.m. (Kelly was rescheduled on a 4 p.m. flight, itself delayed by at least forty-five minutes, and did make it to Boston successfully.)

We finally arrived at Tom’s place in Chelsea, where we learned that Devon had made a reservation at New Ashiya in the East Village. Since we had a couple hours to kill, we each ate a sandwich while we waited for Tom to finish working, and then headed to Sharma’s place. Nathan was already there, having flown in from Canandaigua (Nathan accepted a new position at Monsanto and will be moving to Canandaigua next week.). Terry arrived shortly after with his friend Jeff, and after a couple of beers at the apartment, we made our way to New Ashiya.

This place was great. $30 buys you all-you-can-eat sushi and all-you-can-drink beer and sake. Can you yell sake bomb? (We can…) Although my previous experience with sushi has been limited to a place in the Quad Cities, which I frequent fairly often, and a pan-Asian restaurant in Pune, I found the quality of the sushi to be quite good. (Due to an allergy to shellfish, Terry had to stick to chicken tempura, which for some reason I found hilarious. I actually thought he was just messing with the waitress at first, but allergies are no laughing matter. The rest of us enjoyed fish.) The service wasn’t great, which I guess shouldn’t be too surprising for such a small place packed full of people. Luckily Jeff—described accurately as an “east-coast Nathan”—took it upon himself to intercept any staff member walking by our table with beer or sake, taking it from them and reassuring them that it was intended for our table anyway. Hilarious.

Much to Nathan’s chagrin, we were unable to get many coordinated sake bombs done. Not our fault, though—some girls from a neighboring table kept coming over and slamming our table as soon as we were set up. It was actually pretty funny the first couple times it happened.

After about an hour, the staff came over to inform us that we had only half an hour left. Our reservation was for 9:30 p.m., but no table was available when we arrived. I had set a timer for two hours when we sat down, which I attempted to use as definitive proof that we had another full hour left. In reality it didn’t much matter, as we had more than enough.

We left New Ashiya around 11:45 p.m., and headed to some bars. I don’t think I caught the name of any of the bars to which we traveled Friday night, with the exception of our final destination, the Happy Ending Lounge. We eventually made it back to Tom’s place around 3:30 a.m., and I think we all immediately crashed. Tom generously slept on the floor, Nathan and I took the bed, and Kelby slept on the couch. (He apparently sleepwalked into Tom’s walk-in closet during the night, though, because that’s where we found him in the morning…)

Saturday

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early—around noon. We decided to regroup at Devon’s, to try to decide what our plan was for the afternoon. There was discussion of walking around Central Park or going downtown to see Ground Zero, but in the end, Tom’s suggestion of a boat tour around Manhattan won out. After ordering and consuming some delicious pizza from a local eatery (One sausage and onions, one pepperoni, and one olive and onions, all with uncut basil leaves and fresh mozzarella cheese. Delicious…), we met Kelby at the 42nd Street Circle Line pier for the two hour Harbor Lights cruise.

On board the boat, we enjoyed the sights and sounds over beers. We happened to meet some vacationing ladies from Alabama, who were traveling with their daughters, one of whom celebrated her birthday in the city. 

After returning to shore, Terry said his goodbyes while Devon rejoined the group. I secured reservations at Ben Benson’s steakhouse, a place at which I wanted to eat when I visited the city in 2007. (It turns out that it’s also across the street from the building in which Devon works.) We were all in the mood for prime beef, and we feasted. For our appetizer, we ordered carpaccio of filet mignon and twelve oysters, based on my and Devon’s recommendations, respectively. (Most of us, including me, had never had oysters, and no one other than me even knew what carpaccio is, so it was an adventurous appetizer…) For the main course, I had the 16 oz. filet mignon, medium rare, and the table shared sides of asparagus, mashed potatoes with caramelized onions, and hashed browns. Along with a scotch on the rocks, this made out for a delicious (albeit expensive) meal to cap the trip.

Our hunger sated, we made our way to Zanzibar, a bar in Hell’s Kitchen. As visits to bars go, this one was fairly uneventful, although I understand Nathan was quite taken by a Russian bartender. Apparently Tom and Kelby made it back to Tom’s place by 3 a.m. or so, but Nathan and I detoured back to Devon’s, where we hung out until we realized it was coming up on 5 a.m. and we were going to have to catch flights in just a few hours. We retreated to Tom’s, where we tried to get some sleep. (I slept on the floor. Moan.)

Sunday

Nathan, Kelby, and I planned to share a cab to the airport Sunday morning, but since Nathan’s flight was scheduled to depart an hour earlier than Kelby and mine was, we said our goodbyes at Tom’s. Kelby and I were in pretty rough shape when we arrived at the airport, although both of us had a chance to shower and clean up, at least. Still, we were hurting pretty bad. Our flight to Chicago departed on time, and actually landed a bit early, which ended up being great. I noticed on the departures board that there was a slim chance, if we hurried, that we could catch an earlier flight to the Quad Cities. We made it to the gate as they were boarding, and since the flight wasn’t full, they let us board as well. This shaved about three hours off our travel time, at the cost of skipping lunch—worth it. 

It was a great weekend. I was disappointed that I didn’t have a chance to get ahold of my friend Shannon, who also lives in NYC, but maybe next time. There’s no doubt there will be a next time…

I posted all the pictures from the trip in the gallery, so take a look!