Koala in NYC

The best part about living in New York City is that everyone always visits. There’s no need to travel to see friends, because friends always want to come to see you! New York is the best city in the USA (not biased at all), and there is so much to do.

However, the worst part about living in New York City is ALSO that everyone always visits. If you think it’s exhausting living in the most populated and dense city in the world, navigating without a car, dealing with constant weather changes and no changes of clothes etc., imagine that PLUS showing people around and walking through Times Square. Blegh. My favorite is when someone asks if I’ll be meeting them at the airport. HAHAHHAH No. I will not. What would I do anyway? I can’t go to the gate and I don’t have a car. I will be in my living room waiting for your Uber to arrive.

Anyway, as I mentioned, the complicated part of every tourist’s first NYC visit is that they always want to see and do the same things. Times Square. Freedom Tower. 9-11 Memorial. Top of the Rock. The high line. Broadway shows. The Met. MOMA. The New York Public Library (Carrie was supposed to get married there, you know!). Central Park. 5^th Avenue. And don’t get me started on tourists wanting to go to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I generally advise that it’s a full-day activity and I will meet them when they get back for a late dinner.

I know I sound like a complete B, but it’s very difficult to have tourists in town, when every tourist wants to see the same things that you’ve seen 100 times.

But what happens when the New York visitor used to live in New York, has already done all the things and been all the places, knows how to navigate the subway alone, and doesn’t actually need you to act as a tour guide? Well then, you have fun. And that’s exactly what I have been doing for the past two weeks.

I’m very lucky to have a BFF who lives halfway around the world in Australia, and I’m even luckier that she visits often and we see each other in 3D almost every year.

I met Katherine from Craig’s List, which is where all great friendships begin. (I don’t think I need to tell y’all that is sarcasm, but please do not go searching for new friends on Craig’s List, that is actually how all true crime Netflix documentaries begin, not friendships.) It is, however, how our friendship began. It was March 2014, and I was living in a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment that we had broken into 4 bedrooms. We were searching for a lucky 4^th roommate to join our home. I was living an EXTREMELY miserable life as an attorney, and I was hoping our next roommate would be a fun addition to our crew. Kat showed up to our living room for an interview and we loved her immediately. Her accent, her cleanliness, and did I mention her accent? She had just graduated college and was in New York for a year, looking to explore all of the arts and culture that it had to offer.

The rest is history. She became an integral part of my friends group, and we showed her all of the American things she needed to know, like how cold it gets at Christmas at this latitude (she carried a Christmas tree home from a street vendor with me), and how even though we don’t know much about soccer, we still will drink excessively if the US is playing in the World Cup. We also introduced her to her first Bloomin’ Onion, which, curiously, they do not actually have in Australia. Who knew?

Even though she moved back to Australia in 2015, she came back to visit in the summer of 2016, 2017, 2018 AND 2019. Then she came back to the US for her glorious post-Covid return in 2022, once Australia allowed their citizens to leave again, and she came to Mexico for my wedding. I was so honored to have her there, and I knew I HAD to go to Australia. I had been talking about it for years. Finally, in fall of 2022, I went to visit. We spent two weeks together and had a blast.

Then, 3 weeks ago, she came back to New York. So, what does a person show a “visitor” when she’s seen all the things? Well, as it turns out, mostly restaurants.

A few weeks before Kat’s arrival in the big apple, she sent me her notes app with a full list of 30+ restaurants she wanted to hit. The timing was perfect because the first week she was in New York, I only had two days of work. This left plenty of time for eating. My friends all mobilized because it’s not every day that a person from 10,000 miles away visits! We had a friend fly in from Florida for 5 days, a friend from south Jersey come in for two days, and a friend who was away in Florida for Christmas flew back early to spend time with Kat.

We ate a LOT. We went to Parm. We went to Papaya Dog. She got Halal Guys. We had happy hour at a Mexican place. We had brunch at Bubby’s. We had another brunch at Maison Pickle. We had gelato at Anita. We went to JG Melon’s. We took her to Raising Cane’s for the first time. We went to a HUGE family-style dinner at Carmine’s. We had the special Upper West Side flavor at Ample Hills ice cream (Night at the Museum).

Speaking of museums, visiting museums is her truly favorite activity in New York, but since I don’t love/understand art, I mostly let her get her art fill while I worked. However, she did persuade me to go to the Jewish Museum, which I had never been to before. My mom drove in from Philadelphia for a day visit to see Katherine, and we started the day with bagels, as any good Jew crew does before visiting the Jewish Museum. There was a very interesting exhibit on of photographs of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s collars. Also, there was a beautiful  fashion exhibit of Gaby Aghion and the house of Chloe.

Besides eating and one museum, we also went to see two Broadway shows. The first week, we went to see Gutenberg!, which was absolutely hysterical. We laughed out loud the entire time. While it considers itself a musical, and there are a lot of songs, I wouldn’t say the music was memorable. The comedy, however, was amazing. Also, the entire show was done by the two main actors: Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells. There were literally 0 other people in the show. The only exception was that 10 minutes before the end, there is a guest star every night, and it is always a surprise. The night we went, it was Billy Crystal and people were agog. It was such a fun addition.

For the entire next week, I entered the lottery to see at least 7 different shows every day, and eventually, I won! I ended up winning tickets to see Kimberly Akimbo, which we both had heard amazing things about, but knew absolutely nothing of the plot. When you win lottery seats, you never know where they will be in the theater, and since the tickets are $40/piece, you get what you get, and you don’t get upset. Well, our seats were in the front row. FRONT! Row AA. This was only the second time this happened to me, the other was when I saw Frozen in February 2020. It was a bit annoying craning our heads, but we could see every actor’s facial expressions and it made the experience even more unique and exciting.

We loved Kimberly Akimbo. It was very different from Gutenberg! still funny, but also heartwarming, and cute, and I may have even cried once, what else is new!? I highly recommend it.

Besides Broadway and food, we did a lot of walking around the city, through Central Park, up Riverside Park, through and around Little Island, and into shops in Tribeca. We also did a lot of hanging out with big groups of friends. It was a huge change of pace, given that I was mostly a hermit recluse for the entirety of 2023. Who knew that all it took for me to leave my couch was a friend who traveled across the world. She even got me to stay out on New Year’s Eve until 2 am! I later learned that she was out until 5 am, including a late-night Taco Bell run, but I was impressed with myself for my 2 am bedtime.

I don’t know yet when I’ll see her next, but she’s always welcome to come back to New York, especially because she doesn’t ask me to go to the top of the Empire State Building!