Spring trip to NYC

First trip of the month: success!

John’s sisters and their husbands live in New York City, so once we knew I had a work trip scheduled there, we decided to extend my trip and have John come, too! We flew up late Thursday night and stayed with Marget and Seth in Jersey City.

On Friday I worked remotely, then we all headed into the city for a late lunch at Shake Shack (yum).

Next we walked through the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It wasn’t exactly the most “fun” thing to do on vacation, but we both felt it was important to remember and honor that event in our lives and American history when we had the chance.

I thought the museum and memorial were very beautiful and thoughtfully designed. There are three main sections: the first is an exploration of the World Trade Center itself. The second is a memorial section for the victims. The third is the historical exhibition, which tells the story of what happened on 9/11 through a huge collection of video, audio recordings, photos, newspapers, artifacts, etc. If you are planning to visit, I would recommend moving through the first section more quickly than we did. The final section was both the most emotionally difficult and the most dense, and I would have liked to spend more time there but was a bit spent by the time we reached it.

On Friday we had dinner at Buvette in the West Village. It was perfectly French and made me even more excited for our upcoming trip! Three of us split six small plates and two desserts, which was a great amount of food.

On Saturday Marget and I started the day with yoga at a nearby class. After looping back to pick up Seth, John, and Wes, we met up with Joe and Natalie and the six of us plus baby toured a few favorite NYC spots: Brookfield Place (lunch at Little Muenster!), ABC Home, and snacks at LPQ (mint lemonade) and Eataly.

For dinner that night we all headed back to M + S’s apartment and tried to recreate one of the dishes we’d had the night before at Buvette – basically mashed potatoes and prosciutto on top of bread. It was as delicious as it sounds. It was so nice just to have a chance to sit and talk with some of my favorite people – we don’t see each other enough!

On Sunday John and I traveled back into the city to worship with Hillsong NYC. We have been fans of Hillsong United for quite awhile, and so jumped at the chance to experience Hillsong in person! (It’s estimated that 30 million churchgoers around the world sing Hillsong worship songs on any given Sunday – pretty cool.) Carl Lentz, their lead pastor, was at the Hillsong conference in Australia, so we got to hear Levi Lusko instead. (We were familiar with Levi from watching this video, so it was a treat to hear him in person.)

The experience was very different from what we’re used to every Sunday, but we are grateful for it!

The main song we sang was Broken Vessels, which I wasn’t familiar with but have been loving the last few days.

After brunch at the Tipsy Parson (which Marget described to me as “a place bloggers like to go” – it has great wallpaper) with Natalie and Joe, we headed back to Jersey for a lazy afternoon and takeout Indian before sending John home on a plane. I followed yesterday after speaking on Monday.

Pretty killer apartment view, huh? Up next: Texas!