Wild On - Long Island

After returning home from a week-long business trip to the Wild West of Cheyenne, Wyoming I headed into Manhattan to meet up with some friends. Boy was that a quick change of pace. In Wyoming you can go for miles without seeing anything other than fields and cattle. It's also flat enough that you can actually see what the weather is going to be like in 2 days time. In New York all the tall buildings make this pretty much impossible.

We ordered in some sushi for dinner while we were enjoying some wine and getting ready to go out. With four girls in a Manhattan studio apartment it takes some coordination to get all of us ready and out the door. Especially when Michelle (the owner of the apartment we had taken over) was busily outfitting all of us with her extensive accessory collection as well as her own clothes. - thanks Michelle!

Our destination for the evening was a party Michelle's coworker Chuck and his friends from Long Island were holding at a bar (I think it was called Gypsy Tea) in the Flatiron District. It was $40 to drink for 2 hours, but since we had already "warmed-up" at the apartment, we decided that it would be best to just buy our drinks individually. This ended up working out really well since Chuck was a great host and made sure we had drinks and shots throughout the evening. BTW - I'm not sure if it's like this everywhere in New York, but the shots at Gypsy Tea were huge - definitely the largest shots I've ever had. They came in old fashioned glasses!

Fast forward to the next morning: we wake up, still groggy from the night before and try to piece together the goings-on of our night out. Between the three of us I think we managed to cover everything - but barely! (J had left at 7am on Sunday morning to catch her train home - how she was together enough to do this still remains a mystery)

Michelle informs us that we have 30 minutes to get to Penn Station and catch the Long Island Railroad to meet some friends and embark on a shopping trip at the Tanger Outlet in Riverhead, NY. We quickly scramble to get ourselves together, head off to grab coffee, bagels, and water around the corner and take a cab to Penn Station even though it's a 10 minute walk from Michelle's building because we're running late.

Now I love to shop, but after such a late night the night before, none of us was really up for a full day of outlet shopping. And when I say a full day, I'm not kidding. If it's one thing Manhattanites don't mess around with it's shopping. We arrived at the mall at noon and we shopped until 7:30pm. Good thing we were able to get some rest on the train to Long Island, and nurse our bottles of water in preparation for this marathon of shopping!

I'd say our shopping expedition was a success - wouldn't you?


I *heart* Long Island- can't wait to go back!