Saying Goodbye!

I have had a fabulous bon voyage weekend–running, friends and great food!

It started out with an amazing dinner with Gena at Quintessence.  This is a great raw restaurant; the food was uber-yum last night!  I started with an a la carte taco and had the new sprout, goji berries, cherry tomatoes, candied walnuts and the most amazing fig balsamic dressing.

The best part of the night (not counting the lovely company and conversation)was definitely getting TWO cds hand mixed by Gena.  One is a travel mix and the other is a NYC mix, I can’t wait to listen to them on the plane!

After saying good-bye, I headed to 71 to say hi to a friend in town just for the weekend.  I thought I was full after dinner, but when I passed One Lucky duck, I couldn’t help from getting a pint of the Almond Butter Cup—recently featured on Veggie Girl’s blog.

I hit the subway perfectly and made it home in two stops with minimal meltage.  A couple of bites before bed was the a very sweet ending to the night.  At $18 a pint, it is a good thing a little goes a long way.

This glorious and sunny NYC morning I got up early to do some final loads of laundry and then head of to help the organization I used to intern for with a quick program.  After I walked from Port Authority to my friend Derek’s apartment.  We debated a run in the park versus working out at the Reebok Sports Club, but it was way too nice a day (the nicest we have had since last summer) to spend inside—even though I really want to check out his gym .  So we did the same 4 mile loop I did with Katherine yesterday.  It definitely felt significantly harder than yesterday, I think I was going faster since I didn’t want to bore Derek out of his mind.  In any case, I remembered over the last two days,  just how much more awesome running with company is!  I plan to email everyone I know that is even remotely interested in running as soon as I come back and set up plenty of running dates.

I was pretty famished during and after our run, so after a quick shower, we had a nice brunch at Arte Cafe.  A glorious day full of sunshine and my favorite nyc ritual (brunch), what a great way to spend my last full day.  Although this suddenly amazing weather is making it so hard to leave! Not to mention that the new park that I have been looking at from my window for ages finally opened this weekend!  It looks amazing. 

I have always loved the look out piers at The Gantry

but now there is a big park with hammocks!

and many more lookouts and benches

and you can get up close and personal with the pepsi cola sign

All right, I must be off to finish last minute packing, cleaning and organizing and to say goodbye to a few more people, and if I am ambitious head to a friends roof to watch the fireworks.

Happy Independence Day Folks!

PS Just as a reminder, I have posts scheduled throughout the next three weeks!