Pat had to drop off his car at the dealership in Hell's Kitchen last night, so we made dinner plans there. We started with the "world flight" of beers at Valhalla, 815 9th Ave. There were a variety of 5 small tasty beers from Belgium, Germany, America, and elsewhere. We were very pleased. The bar was a little loud as it was happy hour, but we had a table to ourselves. I looked around and said "look at all these people with their friends!" and we laughed ruefully as we have not exactly spread our social butterfly wings here yet. Fortunately for us, we're still in that phase of coupledom where we find each other's company entirely fulfilling.
After our drinks we went to Island Burgers & Shakes, where the shakes were terrible! Pat's was vanilla and mine chocolate and both arrived at our table melted. Pat flagged his concern to a waiter and got a new one, exactly like first one.
The burgers were decent, though. Mine was Derrick's Burger, with pesto and a lotta spice that sort of overwhelmed me till I got used to it. Its ciabatta roll was probably a poor choice as it was a little too chewy. Pat got the Route 66 Burger, with bacon and avocado on rye bread.
On an entirely unrelated (fortunately) note, Pat and I have been dismayed by how much the subway stops smell like urine. How much urine must be there for the smell to be so powerful? I theorized that perhaps people are peeing onto the air vents at street level so the smell just gets circulated constantly underground. However it happens, it is truly repulsive. Pat remarked how quickly you can go from marvelling at all that is dazzling about New York to marvelling at some of its seedier features.
Also strictly unrelatedly, I have now met our neighbors in 2 apartments. Across the hall from us are Emily and Kim, who do not live there but use the apartment as an office. They showed it to me - it has the most spectacular, huge half-circle window. They told me that the woman who used to live in our apartment (she also had theirs and used it as an office as they do) was a crazy Wiccan type who painted everything purple, red and black, and eventually departed owing several months' rent. The others I met were Heather and her boys, Nolan and Elliott. Last week, Pat noticed that each of the apartments in our hallway had a note under the door similar to the one we got: "I like you. From: Nolan. To: You." It was very cute. We left a note under their door in response: "Hi Nolan! Thank you for your note! We like you too. From Jennie and Pat."
No comments:
Post a Comment