New York City – Memorial Day Weekend (Sunday, Day 3 of 4)
* All names have been altered for privacy.
Other posts in this series: Day 1, Day 2 (part 1), Day 2 (part 2)
Our favorite place to get breakfast in NYC is Jack's Wife Freda. There are a few locations around the city, but our favorite is the one in West Village on Carmine Street. Han and I had stayed up until 3 a.m. the night before, talking and laughing in our hotel room, so we were completely exhausted when we woke up at 8 a.m. to get breakfast, but we knew the delicious food would be worth the fatigue.
Han and I made it downstairs before Mom and Dad, so we sat on a bench outside the hotel for a few minutes while we waited for them.
"How much you wanna bet Lottie and Seth won't come?" Han asked.
I laughed. "They're definitely not going to come."
"I hope Jasper's doing okay," he said, voice soft and pensive.
"I'm sure he's alright," I replied, though I did also worry. The pictures and reports we'd gotten of him the previous day from the kennel had been promising, though. He looked content, if not perfectly happy.
"Here they are," Han said quietly.
I looked up, and my parents were walking through the revolving door out of the hotel.
“Hey, sleepyheads!" I called, my tone lighthearted and joking. "We almost left without you! You gotta get up earlier!"
Dad rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah."
"Are Lottie and Seth coming?" I asked, turning to Mom.
"I'll text them," Mom said, then looked down at her phone to type them a message.
We waited a couple extra minutes just in case they showed or texted back, but they didn't. So we walked through the bustling streets that cool morning to the subway, then rode all the way to West Village. I love taking the subway; it can transform a thirty-minute walk or a twenty-minute drive into a five-minute ride. It is, by far, the fastest and most efficient way of getting around New York City.
It took us about three or four stops to get to West Village, then we walked for about five minutes to get to the restaurant.
Jack's Wife Freda in West Village is one big room, longer than it is wide. There's one long table in the center of the room, like the kind of table where a king would sit at the very end, except there's no end seat, just bench seats along both sides. There are other, smaller tables scattered around the room, a few two-person tables, and a few four-person tables.
The walls are a creamy white color, and the floors are composed of large, cream-colored tiles with black squares surrounding them. It feels like a café that would belong in Paris. The walls are lined with a strange mix of modern art and intricate paintings with heavily stylized Hebrew letters. Everything about this place feels friendly and warm. The owners of the restaurant are from Israel and South Africa. They serve a mix of American, Mediterranean, and Jewish comfort food that is to die for.
There's a reason you have to show up early here. The tables will be packed by 9:30 a.m. Thankfully, we had arrived at the restaurant early enough that getting a table was quick and easy.
I ordered a latte and my favorite item on the menu: rosewater waffles. They were served with a dollop of yogurt on top, sprinkled with mixed berries, and fresh maple syrup. The waffles were light and fluffy, and with the yogurt, it isn't too sweet, even when you add maple syrup. The berries were perfectly ripe, but just a tiny hint of sourness.
Han always orders the shakshuka, a popular North African/Middle Eastern dish, featuring eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce. Han’s mom is from Israel, and her parents were from Iraq, so Han grew up eating red shakshuka. At Jack's Wife Freda, they serve green shakshuka, which I think is made from a different base, but it’s still absolutely delicious.
Mom got eggs and sausage, so she and I split the eggs and the waffles, and Dad ordered a little grapefruit bowl.
"Is that all?" The waiter asked when my Dad ordered.
"Yes, I don't eat very much," Dad replied with an innocent smile.
Mom, Han, and I all burst out laughing because that isn't true at all. He was going to eat whatever the rest of us didn't finish, and would still be hungry after that, I was certain.
We took our time at breakfast, enjoying the delicious food and even better company. I felt so bloated afterward because I had seriously overeaten. If you're trying to lose weight and lack self-control, it's best to avoid this restaurant. Everything is too good to resist.
After breakfast, we took a very long detour back to our hotel. We walked the High Line, which is absolutely beautiful, especially in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. The High Line was an old rail line, but it was shut down and converted into a walkway filled with plants. It goes on for a while and goes past some very cool-shaped buildings.
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| walking the high line © Jessica McKendry |
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| cool building views on the high line © Jessica McKendry |
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| more cool views from the high line © Jessica McKendry |
Dad was walking at a kind of insane pace, so my feet started to hurt a bit, but I wasn't going to complain.
"Hey, what's that!?" I called, momentarily distracted from the pain in my feet.
Mom and Dad turned to look at me, then followed my gaze.
“Oh, that’s the Little Island!” Mom said.
“We haven’t taken you there before?” Dad asked.
I shook my head. “Can we go?”
So Dad took us to Little Island, and we walked through the park on the manmade island. There’s a small amphitheater on the island, too, which is often used for concerts and events.
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| little island © Jessica McKendry |
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| crossing the bridge to little island © Jessica McKendry |
We returned to the hotel around noon and had already taken 12,000 steps!
Lottie and Seth had awakened by then and had gotten breakfast at the little café inside the hotel. We all dressed up a little to go see our next show: Operation Mincemeat.
This musical is based on a true story of how the British tricked over 90,000 German soldiers into leaving Sicily during WWII. I’d never heard of the musical before, and I had no idea what it was about before going into it.
The music is beautiful. It’s both fun and upbeat, yet deeply emotional. There are only four or five cast members, and each actor plays multiple roles. At first, it’s quite silly to see some male actors switch into female characters, and female actors switch into male characters. It was written to feel silly at first. But at some point, it becomes so believable that it isn’t funny anymore, and it just becomes beautiful.
Unfortunately, Han started falling asleep in the most emotional song, so I was annoyed. I took his hand and gave him a hand massage to help him stay awake so that he didn’t start snoring. At the intermission, he went and grabbed a rum and coke, which I was worried would only make him more tired.
“I’ll be fine,” he promised as he sat back down next to me. “I’m really enjoying the musical. We just did so much walking this morning and stayed up so late last night!”
I nodded. That was totally fair.
After the show, we went to Empanada Mama, a restaurant where the entire menu consisted of different kinds of empanadas. I got a mac & cheese empanada, a ground beef empanada, and a rice & beans empanada. I also ordered an apple juice.
Dad gave me a disappointed look, and Lottie, Seth, Mom, and Han all laughed at me.
“What?” I cried, defensively. “I like juice!”
“Are you a child?” Dad asked, though he was trying not to smile.
“Apple juice is not only for children!” I replied with a scoff.
The empanadas were delicious, of course. The ground beef one was really good, but I’ve gotta be honest, my favorite was the mac & cheese one.
After lunch, Lottie, Seth, Han, and I split off from my parents. We returned to the hotel while my parents attended a friend’s birthday party, and we relaxed and played Fortnite for a bit.
In the evening, we went to the Village Underground Comedy Cellar. Han led us there because my parents were meeting us there. We waited outside the Comedy Cellar for my parents since they had our tickets.
While we waited, Lottie pulled me aside while Han and Seth talked. Seth––who is a cop––kept talking about how you can identify which homeless people are on some really bad drugs, because they’re the ones with no shoes on. I think he was trying to sound cool, but we weren't impressed.
Mom and Dad finally arrived after we had been waiting for about ten or fifteen minutes, and we went into the Comedy Cellar together. The security personnel had to put everyone’s phones in bags, and we were required to keep our phones and all our electronics in bags until the show was over. We could keep the bags at the table with us; we just couldn’t open them until we left.
The show was hilarious, we could hardly breathe, we were laughing so hard! This was the lineup
Ayanna Dookie was my favorite. Her ex-husband was a cop, so she told a lot of jokes about him, and Mom, Lottie, and I were dying laughing. Seth was laughing, too, but I’m not sure he found it quite as funny as the rest of us did.
After the show, Dad took us to John’s of Bleeker, a pizza place, but Dad was walking so fast, and Lottie was wearing heels, so her feet really hurt. Dad was quite a ways ahead of the rest of us.
“Go tell Dad to slow down,” Mom said to me.
“Agh, okay,” I replied, then ran up the street to walk just behind Dad. “Hey, can we slow down a bit? Lottie's feet hurt!”
“No, we gotta get there!” Dad said.
I grabbed his arm and tried to slow him down, but he just kept walking.
“Why do we have to go so fast?” I asked.
“Because they close in seven minutes!” Dad said.
“You should have led with that!” I cried, then stopped pulling his arm. I turned around to face Lottie, Seth, Mom, and Han. “Guys, hurry up! The place is closing!”
I don’t think Mom was thrilled that we were going so fast, but we made it to John’s of Bleecker with five minutes to spare before it closed. We ordered extremely quickly, and I was honestly shocked that they took our order.
We devoured the pizza, even though it felt hotter than lava in our mouths, then went to another boba place across the street called Heytea. I ordered a mango drink, but the man taking our orders kept getting confused because we were all ordering at the same time. He could have easily gotten annoyed with us, but he was very friendly and patient.
We drank our boba–or in my case, my mango drink–as we walked back to the subway. On the way, we talked about Grandma, who passed away in May, and how Aunt Joyce had taken such good care of Grandma right up until the end. It was Aunt Joyce who’d gone to Grandma every day she was in the hospital during her recovery.
“We should call her,” Han said.
So we FaceTimed her.
“Hello?” She said, answering the phone.
“Hi Aunt Joyce!” We all said into the camera.
“Oh hi, guys!” Aunt Joyce replied. “We’re watching The Watch right now, since Wander has never seen it!”
“We just wanted to tell you that you’re such an amazing person!” Mom said.
“Yeah, and we love you so much!” I added.
“Thank you, guys,” Aunt Joyce said. “I love you, too!”
We talked to her a little longer and said hello to Uncle Goose, Amelia, Oliver, and Wander (my cousin Amelia’s boyfriend). Then, we went down into the subway station and waited for a train. Mom was a little tipsy from the alcohol we had at the Comedy Cellar, so she and I were stretching and being silly.
Lottie and Seth were standing off to the side. I think they were arguing.
Anyway, we got back to the hotel safely and went to bed after all that.
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