Last weekend was a girls weekend and a celebration of my roommates new job with Food & Wine and Travel & Leisure Magazines! She started her position about two weeks ago, but we had to delay the celebration so that more of the girls could come out!

                          

Friday night we decided to take advantage of the one nice evening we’ve had in a while and headed downtown to Rare View Chelsea. Rare View is a rooftop bar (you know I can’t get enough) at the Hilton. It was a low-key atmosphere with, as expected, beautiful views! It was pretty cool too because it was close enough to the Empire State Building that you could see the flashes from cameras at the observation deck. The bar was also pretty cool because it had a lot of seating that wrapped around the whole perimeter. Most of it is enclosed with glass too so you didn’t have to worry about getting cold up there. I’m not sure if it is more of a Happy Hour location or if we just hit an off night, but it never got too crowded, which was kind of nice for a change. The drinks were reasonable and it was a nice evening to actually be able to sit down, have nice conversation and enjoy the view. 

                           

For our second night of celebrating we headed down to the Lower East Side to Ella Lounge. The Ella Lounge was quite the opposite of Rare View in that it is a pretty small place, and it was packed the entire night we were there. The Ella Lounge’s decor is inspired from the 20’s and 30’s and did a good job of portraying old Hollywood glamour. The bartenders were dressed appropriately in old-school proper outfits as well. The Ella is known for having great music, either live or with a dj. We caught the lounge on an off night for live music, but the dj did live up to our expectations. They are also known for their specialty cocktails. I didn’t try one this time, but if I were to go again I would have to try whatever cocktail they scooped watermelon into. Definitely looked interesting!

All and all it was a nice weekend with the girls and we finally got to celebrate Darcy’s latest accomplishment!

       

The 9th Avenue International Food Festival is one of New York’s street faires that stand out amongst the others and New Yorkers look forward to. This year marked the 38th annual event and I’m happy to say I got to check it out. What’s better than a street faire dedicated to foods you may or may not have tried before?! Personally, I love street faires in general so you can bet I wasn’t going to miss one of New York’s favorites. A whole 20 blocks of, you guessed it, FOOD!

We made it down there and off the subway at about 1 o’clock and having not eaten anything yet our stomachs were growling and ready to demolish everything in our surroundings. Instead of attacking the first stand I saw though I decided instead I wanted to try things I hadn’t tried before, and I wanted a lemonade. Chris on the other hand didn’t take my approach and was in line at the first Empanada stand he saw. The mere 8 months I have lived here have made me realize one thing if nothing else, that I still have a lot of foods to try! There are so many things I’ve tried here that I didn’t even know existed. An empanada for example. 

We continued through the streets onto my first purchase of the day, lemonade! I had my eyes peeled for strawberry lemonade, but found a mixed fruit lemonade I decided was worthy of trying. It was a good decision. While walking with my lemonade I caught something out of the corner of my eye I decided I had to have, a blooming onion! We walked by 3 or 4 of them before asking someone where they got it. We still had a little ways to walk there, but along the journey Chris made his second and third purchases of the day. A Bratwurst from a German stand and some Pierogies from a Polish stand. Again, another thing I had never tried. A pierogi! It was a day of firsts.

After this point we were close to my big purchase of the day! Aw, sweet blooming onion you were so good to me. I know I have seen blooming onions before, but I’ve never tried one. They split the onion, fry it, cut out the center, and serve it with some kind of horseradish sauce. It was worth every cent of the $8 it cost!

After we finished the onion off our stomachs were feeling pretty full and we called it a day. I give the 9th Avenue Food Festival two thumbs up though!