Big Apple Skillet

After faaaaaaaaar too long, I finally had my skillet (aka best friend), Amanda, come visit this past weekend. We'd made the plans earlier in the summer and I was busting at the seams excited for her to get here. After a very delayed bus ride (of course), she finally made it into the city on Friday evening. For a couple of years straight while we both lived in Atlanta, Amanda and I set aside every Friday as our "date night" if you will, heehee. While we weren't always sure what our plans would be, we just knew they would involve each other in some respect. Thus, "ritual" was created. We were both so excited to celebrate ritual Friday together like the old days.

After catching up for a bit, we went to a super fun potluck/game night at my friend, Colleen's, apartment. I got to introduce Amanda to a bunch of people, we ate yummy food, and played games together. It was such a nice evening in and a great way to relax before our adventurous Alphabet City pub crawl the next day.

Let me just tell you...we had so much fun on Saturday. We had a GREAT group of people come out and spend the day with us which was clearly a bonus to already being there with Amanda. :) I had planned a pub crawl throughout Alphabet City to check out some new bars and it proved to be a giant success. We started off at Sunburnt Cow where Amanda and I very wisely ate a big lunch and a big glass of water before starting in on any cocktails. They've got a great brunch special there so we decided to try a burger with "the lot" thinking it was a bunch of cheese or bacon or whatever. Yep, we definitely got a burger with lettuce, tomato, cheese, onions, beets, pineapple, bacon and a fried egg:

It was a mighty fine burger, beets and all. Sunburnt Cow is so much fun and the bartenders are just awesome. I cannot wait to go back there! We ended up staying there for three hours before realizing that's not much of a pub crawl.

Our second stop was Porch which was such an awesome space. I can imagine it gets totally insane late night though, which I'd hate, so we were happily enjoying the casual 4pm crowd. Side note, they definitely have a DJ spinning at 4pm which was both odd and tremendous. Yes, I made a map for the day and yes, I got laughed at:

Not sure why those photos look all slanted. Anyway, my map proved to be valuable later so I pat myself on the back for that one.

We continued on from there to Manitoba's (which was no fun so we left), 7B, and finally Lucy's which is hands down my new favorite bar. Lucy actually bartends and she's in her late 60's. She's Polish with a very heavy accent and absolutely as cute as can be. We talked to her forever as we drank Polish beers and heard stories about her younger years. Our whole group just loved her. Also, our tab consisted of her basically saying "just give me 20 bucks" which, for 10 or so people, works very nicely. :) Honestly, I have no idea how she does it but Lucy is a spitfire and I love her. So much fun:

Ok, my camera officially sucks. I've been trying to figure out what the heck went wrong with these photos but I don't know, booo! At any rate, we really had a terrific weekend. I miss Amanda so much and I'm just thrilled she was able to come visit. Until next ritual:

:)