Long time, no see!

I know, I know.. I've been a little MIA and it's been a long time since I've blogged. But you really can't blame me because I just moved to the greatest city in the world, so I've been enjoying my time here as much as possible! We have been able to take advantage of so many amazing things, so I thought it'd be good to share some of the highlights from the fun times that we've had.

On our second weekend here we headed to Madison Square Park for the annual Big Apple BBQ Block Festival. There were numerous tents for the different BBQ vendors that had everything from smoked brisket, to ribs, to fried pies. When we got there we took a minute to take advantage of the free samples (Jack Daniels caramel corn? yes please!), put on some pig ears and checked out the tents.

Most of the BBQ vendors had short lines where you could walk up, get your 'que and head on to the next tent. But there were two tents that had lines so long that the wait was upwards of 30-45 minutes! I felt proud as I realized that one of those tents was for the Raleigh based restaurant, The Pit, but we opted to not wait in that line since we were already familiar with how good their food is. We tried a few different vendors, tasted some local beer, and got our picture taken with a "pit master" (while still rocking the pig ears, naturally). We had a blast during the festival, and it made me proud to be a Southerner in the big city.

(Note: the below picture is not of the pit master, that is our good friend Meredith who also enjoys some good 'que)

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to see my first Broadway show, and even better is the fact that we got to go for free! A friend of a friend of a friend happens to do the PR for some Broadway shows, and her current project was the new "Spiderman: Turn of the Dark" show. She needed some "seat fillers" for the show so that the audience would be full, and we were more than happy to help her out with that!

The show was fantastic, and the first thing I said after we got out of the theater was: "I want to see that again!". Although the music was OK at best (it was written by Bono, he really could have done a better job), and I'm sure that theater enthusiasts would probably say that there was much left to be desired, I loved every second of it! The costumes, set, and aerial stunts were amazing and the show managed to keep me entertained the entire time. With the reputation of the show I was alert the whole time to see if there would be any accidents with the actors flying around the theater, but as far as we could tell the show went off without a hitch. I would see the show again in a heartbeat, and hopefully that friend of a friend of a friend will need more seat fillers in the future.

Other free things that we have been able to do include a Shakespeare in the Park showing of "Measure for Measure", a movie showing in Bryant Park, and a street fair celebrating Chinese and Jewish heritage called the "egg rolls and egg creams festival". There are many people who claim that summertime in the city is the best time of year, and now I see exactly why that may be true! Vlady and I both agree that we moved up here at just the perfect time, and I look forward to more fun (and free) events for the rest of the summer.