THE SIXTH ANNUAL TOUR DE BROOKLYN!

Time for a New Year's Eve post. Finally. 

And this year Le Tour de Brooklyn happened again! 

It was the sixth annual Tour and my fourth time along for the ride. 

In case you've forgotten, Le Tour de Brooklyn is the event my college friend Lee and his four best friends from high school put on every New Year's Eve. We make stops at each of their Brooklyn dwellings from mid-afternoon 'til midnight drinking different drinks at each.

(See 2014, 2015.)

Now onto December 31st, 2016... 

 This New Year's Eve Day started out with a quick run on my part.

 When I got back we all did the NYC everything bagel thing for a second day in a row and then got ready to go out.

We started out at Lee's friend Ted's house in the mid-afternoon for Dark n' Stormies. All of Lee's friends bring their college friends on Le Tour too so the first stop is always filled with lots of semi-awkward sober introductions and reintroductions.

One of the funniest things about the first stop was that the gingerbeer Ted used made everyone cough like crazy. As far as ice breakers go, a room full of 20 people coughing and unable to drink their drink until tons of ice is put in is a good one.

 Stop 2 this year was at Adam's house. There were tropical daiquiris!

Stop 3 was Jacob's house. There were delicious apricot bellinis (forgot to take a pic of them... oops), which I'm dying to recreate, gorgeous mallomars (which I couldn't eat because of gelatin), and Mike fell asleep. ;p

After, we went to the Promenade for our annual pics. The crazy part is that's not even the whole group! Some people joined late or were setting up for Stop 4...

Good old stop 4. Bad beer and fun drinking games. Of all the stops, this one is usually my favorite. There's also Charlotte the Corgi too who I always take an annual selfie with. :D

Looking back I didn't take any pics of the short-lived Stop 5, but here's Stop 6 - our midnight ball-drop destination. After the ball dropped, we went out on the roof for awhile before going home to get at least a little sleep before departing the city in the morning.

NYC BEFORE NEW YEARS

So we're in the second half of January, and I'm finally around to posting about my time in NYC before New Years... Oh yes. 

After spending Christmastime in the Adirondacks, I headed back to NYC to celebrate New Year's with Joe and the rest of our college friends (and also hangout for a few days too)!

So the day I got into NYC, I had a long travel day. Dan and I drove home from the Adirondacks together through snow, ice, and rain, and then took the train into the city. Being back at Grand Central was so weird. When I worked in NYC I was there at least twice a week, if not twice a day.

Before heading to Brooklyn I decided I needed to go to my favorite chain of wonderful cheap NYC threading salons to get my eyebrows threaded because I hadn't done that since before the trail :x and then I headed to Brooklyn.

I was actually the last of my friends to get in and since everyone had grabbed lunch a few hours before, I stopped for a few dollar slices. Of all the things I miss about NYC, dollar slices of pizza are near the top of the list.

 Even though I missed lunch with everyone, I arrived just in time for sunset. (Whoa).

After sunset, we headed out. And by we, I mean everyone except Joe :(. He had actually come down with a 24 hour bug and stayed in. It was really sad. He just wanted to sleep and told me I should go out, so that's what I did, but it was hard being out with everyone knowing he wasn't feeling well and wasn't with us. That being said, It was good to catch up with my favorite college people. We went out for dinner and then did a little bar hopping after dinner including this place with the most beautiful views of the Empire State Building. It also had igloos for the cold weather. They were all filled, but I guess we now know for next year!

The next day, Joe was feeling better! We all hung out in the morning and ate everything bagels and played this game (pictured above). I don't even remember what it was called, but it was so funny to watch. I was super good at it too and never got whip creamed in the face!

After breakfast, we headed out to Bryant Park. We wanted to ice skate like we did last year, but when we found out the line was 2.5 hours we passed and went to the New York Public Library.

Later in the afternoon, we went down to The Oculus and the Freedom Tower. I never actually went down there when I lived in NYC and hadn't been down that way since shortly after 9/11 so it was an odd feeling to be back fifteen years later.

 For dinner, we headed to Ippudo making it the third year in a row we've gone. (Yay traditions!) I got my favorite wasabi vegetarian ramen, which is my favorite ramen of anywhere ever, and was so happy.

After dinner, we headed to a bar so Maggie could watch the U of M football game. None of us were particularly interested in the game besides Maggie, so we played games at the table and took advantage of the $3 happy hour specials and ordered a lot of drinks upfront so we didn't have to pay for $8 drinks later lol.

Another fun thing was that Laura and her boyfriend David met up with us! I was slightly worried that the college friends all together at once with our gazillion inside jokes would be a little bit much for them, but they jumped right in and really hit it off with everyone. They even came back to Brooklyn with us for more games and drinks after the U of M game was over!

Anyway, that's it for pre-New Year's in NYC. Tune in tomorrow (probably) for a recap of New Year's Eve in NYC!

xo

Fancy Drinks & Tapas

The night before I moved out of my apartment, Amie AB and I got drinks at Seamstress - a place she had been mentioning we should try for months that was right around the corner from my apartment.

There are many, many reasons why AB is one of my BFFs, but one of this biggest reasons is that we're both foodies and she always has best restaurant and bar recommendations. Like she could be hired by a hip magazine to write for their food column. That's how good her recos are.

As expected, Seamstress was wonderful. Neither of us had ever spent that much on a cocktail (about $18 with tax/tip), but I don't think either of us had ever had a cocktail with such care put into it. Every ingredient was carefully selected - so much so that ingredients rarely overlapped between drinks and we kept having to ask what the unique ingredients were. AB's drink was margarita-like and contained Patron, apricot juice, and a honeysuckle-peppercorn syrup with fennel and salt on the rim (omg). My drink contained campari, raspberry liqueur, some of an IPA, and was poured over ice that had been chiseled by hand right in front of us. Also, yes it took me 20 minutes to order. Lol.

The atmosphere was calm and warm at Seamstress so we stayed and chatted for awhile. When hunger inevitably set in, for dinner, ended up at a tapas place AB had also been mentioning we should try for months (also right around the corner from my apartment). We each had another drink (because you seriously can't pass up sangria when you have tapas) and then got Potatos Brava + Tortilla Espagnola + the tastiest flatbread I've ever had to split.

It was the nicest last night living in the city (and the best way to prolong packing and cleaning as much as possible)!