Memorial Day Weekend

The weeks just seem to fly by and the weekends go even faster. Most of the time it was a blur and if it weren't for all the pictures I take and receipts in my wallet, I probably would forget most of what happened. We started our weekend early on Friday.

We played music at home and went into the city to run some errands. What those errands were, I don't remember exactly, but I do remember buying some 120mm film for one of my cameras - Ivan's request. Oh, and we also bought Home Movies Season 4! I found a Tower Records credit receipt from 2001 and they let me use it, so that's always a good thing.

We saw another bike protest and NYC cops were purposely blocking the bike path. I saw one giving a ticket to someone without a helmet, but I didn't understand why they'd block the bike paths in several places though. A lot of the bicyclists were yelling, "Stop blocking the bicycle path!" and then they all started chanting something but I couldn't make out what it was.

We eventually ended up at Gonzalez y Gonzalez, where we shared a pitcher of pink Sangria and some appetizers. We sat at the bar afterwards to watch the end of the Mets game and walked back home. Before we hit the Path we stopped by a Wine store and got a German Rielsing, which I've recently gotten hooked on.

On Saturday I met my parents at Churrascaria Plataforma by Time Square in the later afternoon. It was a place that I trudged across Manhattan during the Transit Strike last December to get both our parents Rodizio gift certificates for Christmas. My parents never used them so I figured I'd use this opportunity to get them out of the old neighborhood and try something new (finally!). My dad, being the meat-eater that he is, tried practically everything! =) The bread on the table tasted like a Pan de Yuca and it was so warm! We had a pitcher of Sangria, and I would definitly go there just to hang out at the bar with some Sangria and some dessert.

For dessert, I had a flourless chocolate cake. It was in the shape of a pyramid and it was delicious! The coffee was great and that's always a major plus! When we left they had put some sushi out, so I think the buffet area changes during the course of the day. The sushi did look really good, but I was so stuffed at that point.

Saturday my hunny told me to reserve the whole day for him. =) We went to Time Sq. and walked through the Time Sq. festival. We got some elephant ears and coffee and walked by some Spiderman filming that was going on. Then we went to Rockefellar to see the Top of the Rock! He surprised me with tickets he bought ahead of time! The views from up there were amazing! I brought my medium format camera and took some pictures with that. Ivan took a bunch of pictures of me taking pictures, which explained why he was lurking behind me a bunch of times...hehehe... We also bought the pictures that the people were taking at various places. As soon as they would take the picture, they'd give us this ticket and the picture would already be sent to the place downstairs where they were printing them out. That was a pretty cool thing.

Then we walked up to Central Park and did the Walking Tour of Central Park and ended up by the American Museum of Natural History, where he had purchased a package for us to see a few films! A surprise again! We are both fans of documentaries, and national geographic, etc. so it was something we both enjoyed. One of them was about Cosmic Collisions and how the earth formed. Some of the timelines they mentioned seemed new to me, I wonder if they were results of more recent space research. They said it took the moon about a week to form. Hmmm. The other movie we saw was at the IMAX and it was about the Galapagos island. That one was pretty awesome too.

Then we went back home to rest up a little before going out to dinner. We went to Knickerbocker Bar and Grill. If you've been in the village, you've probably seen it..it's on the same block as BBQ but on the other corner. If ever there existed a place that made steak to melt in your mouth, this was it. (the DSA said I said that 8 times this week, but I'll say it every time...). We both had the braised short-ribs and...oh my goodness...SO GOOD! Since it was a celebratory day, I tried the Churros. We also had a bottle of wine that was EXCELLENT!! Hopefully, our walking burned some of that off though.

When we got back to Hoboken, Adam met up with us near the Path. (Thanks Adam!) And he brought me another bottle of wine, Riesling. We didn't end up drinking it, but probably later on this week. I think at that point we had already drank so much.

Monday we kept it low key. We did some cleaning and went to get some fake food and groceries. We bought a watermelon and I made a bunch of watermelon balls. Then Ivan filled it with flovored vodka and rum and we put back all the watermelons inside and let it sit in the fridge to soak. I don't know where that idea came from, but I think Ivan got it from his little sister (ironically, who's underage!! hahaha...go figure!).

Adam came upstairs and he made some Guacamole and brought some chips and crackers. The Guac he made was really good and we broiled some salmon and ate it with Salad. Then, on to the watermelon!

It was all really good and we had so much left over...we were glad we only bought half a melon b/c we almost bough a whole watermelon. So, then we put a lot of watermelon into the blender with some popsicles and made some drinks and watched Home Movies.