NYC, finally at the end of my trip!

By the time I got off the train at 2 am in New York, I was wishing I had just rode it all the way back to DC with Erin. I was exhausted, but I hadn't been up to New York since the Spice Girls concert. Plus the weather was so miserable that weekend that Erin and I didn't do much in the way of touring. So I reminded myself that I NYC and all my friends there and that I'd be missing out on a lot if I skipped over it. (Plus the train conductors would notice if I road all the way back to DC with a New York ticket and they would not be happy.) Looking back, I am so glad I stayed! The weather was amazing. I got my first new freckles of the year! And I got to spend a ton of time playing around the city!

So on the first day, I slept in pretty late. Finally around noon, I rolled out of Jamie's/Allie's/Alex's apartment where I was staying and ventured up to Columbia (look another law school!). Of course I am a complete dunce and didn't read their visitor's information page very closely online because all classes were canceled that day for the moot court competition they had which Chief Justice Roberts presided over. When I tried to follow their little self tour booklet (I was at the school, I felt I should do something), I got even more frustrated. The directions weren't clear, and I couldn't find any of the things they pointed out. The one thing I did find, the library, was reigned over by your stereotypical spinster-looking evil librarian. After she was so short with me, I gave up on trying to poke around the school an just walked around the neighborhood instead. The most note worthy sights were this statue and a girl laying out in a tiny bikini in the park (in April!).


Check out that detail! The mini ark was fabulous! Anyways no pictures of the bikini-clad girl. Although I was impressed by her boldness, I was not impressed to the point where I was going to risk looking like a creep by taking long distance pictures of this stranger. After these 2 sights, I figured I'd gotten the most out of the neighborhood and headed back down town to wait for Jamie to get out of class. As I was amusing myself snapping photos of the different architecture downtown (see below), I ended up running right into Jamie's school.


This building was very 70' s-esque, but I adored all the color tile! Bright and fun never goes out of style.


These are actually the Credit Suisse buildings which is a company I know only through my encounters with that at work (which means I know very little outside of they have a lot of money and do financially stuff with it). I've always imagined them as one of those cold, evil, John Grisham-type companies. So it seemed perfect that they would have that standard blah NYC high rise with some Gothic looking towers, but then they had this bridge. The bridge is really what interested me because it reminded me a lot of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. Now if a soulless, profit-obsessed company is going to reference anything in their architecture, I'd think the last thing they would choose would be the Bridge of Sighs, but whether it was an accident or not, it is perfect poetic justice.


And look! Here's Jamie's school! I thought this building was awesomely modern, took a picture, realized this is where Jamie happened to matriculate, and 2 minutes later she called me to say she was out of class. Then I told her I was here to pick her up from school. It was perfect timing. Off we went to play! First Jamie introduced me to the wonderful world of fancy frozen yogurt chains. (Why do we not have these in DC yet?!?!?!?!?) Obviously I had heard of Pinkberry before thanks to endless plug from Perez Hilton and the Plum Card commercials, but there are so many more that I had never heard of! There's Flurt, Berrywild, Tasti-D-Lite... There's probably even more than that, but it was hard to keep track. Seriously, though, every block it was a different Pinkberry knockoff! NYC certainly has more than enough yogurt chains to share. Spread some fro-yo loving to the District! In my short time visit New York I was only able to sample 2 of the contenders. It came down to the contender...


...versus the original...


And the winner was... Pinkberry! Hands down. I am obsessed with their green tea flavor. Mmm so good! I was totally blown away with how it actually tasted like frozen yogurt. Not like the frozen yogurt you get at the store, but like someone took a cup of yogurt and made it really really cold. Totally unlike ice cream and also totally awesome. Mayor Fenty needs to get on this lack of Pinkberries ASAP. Books for inner city schools can wait, what those children really need is some vanilla fro-yo with fresh fruit and Cap'n Crunch. That'll edumacate them.