Email number 42 came in today asking where pictures were from our adventures in New York. I think my lovely stalkers are trying to tell me something?!
Our trip to New York actually started in Newark, New Jersey. Somehow flying a couple of hours into Newark and driving 2 hours to New Paltz in upstate New York made much more sense than flying 6+ hours into Albany, New York. I love you Southwest Airlines, but two stops + ‘unhappy flying Vivie’ were just not going to work for me this time.
After being chastised multiple times when traveling to California with my strobes in May, I decided to treat them like a laptop and pull them out of my carrying cases. Note: just as they had told me to do. I just ended up confusing the security personnel who seemed to really enjoy handing me back my shoes, “you can have THESE back” and swabbing the strobes for explosives residue. And just as EVERYONE told me, Newark security peeps ended up swabbing all of my equipment and carefully eyeballing my cords and battery chargers.
I smiled sweetly and tried to cram it all back in, which EVERYONE knows is impossible to do at the airport because everything somehow expands and zippers cease to function properly there.
Right, so the trip…
We met the ever gracious & spunky Neil Van Niekerk in Paramus, New Jersey at Papa Razzi (yeah, laugh it up!) for lunch shortly after we arrived. (I didn’t take any pictures of him, so I pulled one out of the blog archives)
The following day, Friday, Viv and I hungrily set out for the city of New Paltz.
Since no cheese place is safe from us, our keen cheese instincts quickly found The Cheese Plate. It was heavenly and delicious to say the least.
Skip a few days to Sunday- Viv, Kelly (my friend from Waterloo, NY) and I went hiking. Viv and I have never been hiking but we were promised a lovely waterfall was within 200 yards of the parking lot. I’m not sure if New Yorkers have a different definition of 200 yards, but in Texas terms that’s two football fields. I can visualize that. This seemed liked dozens of miles, uphill. In the snow. Ok, I’m kidding about the snow.
Here’s a picture of Viv on a rock. YAY.
The AMAZING scenery.
Moss! In real life!
Ok, ok, the hike was pretty gorgeous.
And the waterfall itself was totally worth it.
We took our hungry selves to Neko Sushi back in New Paltz, because we could. Kelly has a cat named Neko.
(Neko = “cat” in Japanese)
Kelly’s first try at sushi. We let her use a fork.
To round out our Sunday, we went apple picking. Of course.
We’ve never had an apple fresh off the tree. YUM!
I coaxed Viv into getting to an apple barrel/box.
We enjoyed ourselves TOO much.
Looking for some more apples to pick. Lots of lowest hanging fruit jokes were told.
