Labor Day Weekend in Atlantic City

B, J, and I went to Atlantic City for the weekend.  We'd been trying to go all summer and finally just pulled the trigger and went.  It's insane how much hotel rooms in Atlantic City cost, thank God for Starwood points!

We played some blackjack, hung out on the beach, shopped at the outlets, and had yummy dinners at PF Changes and Ruth's Chris. 

In the spirit of my recent commitment to weight loss, I also managed to get in a 3 mile run.  It's hard to eat well while traveling and during the holidays but I think I at least did better than I normally would have.  That has to count for something, right?

The gambling was a bit of a roller coaster but we all ended up taking home more than we went there with, not something you can always say!
I made some great finds at the outlets too, can't complain about that.

Now back to a normal (though short) work week...

Nassau, Bahamas!

B and I had been talking about taking a vacation somewhere for months and just not pulling the trigger.  We really wanted to get some scuba in, and we just love to travel.

So, on a whim, I decided to check to see who flies out of Westchester County Airport.  After all, it's about 5 miles from where we live!  Turns out, JetBlue has several flights out of HPN and a direct flight to Nassau, very reasonably priced.  PERFECT!

Even though we were only planning about 3 weeks in advance, we decided to see if anyone else wanted to join us and we got 4 of our friends (2 other couples) to come along.

So, last weekend (Thursday to Sunday) we went to the Bahamas for a long weekend with some of our friends.  It was SO nice to be away and to hang out with everyone.

It was literally 8 degrees in NY when we left.  It was in the mid 70s most of the time we were in the Bahamas.  Not crazy hot, but definitely NOT 8 degrees!

We stayed at the Sheraton Beach Resort & Casino.  We picked it because Brad has the SPG points, so it was the right price. :-)  The pool area and beach were nice, the food was overpriced (as expected) and the casino was a little lame.  But, it all worked out nicely.
C&R stayed with us and A&M had their own room (first come, first serve for the free rooms!).

We had our first dinner out at The Poop Deck  .  The food was good, if a little pricey.  We tried our first of many conch fritters, and continued sampling Gumbay Smash drinks everywhere we could (started at the pool!).



B and I went on one scuba excursion with Stuart Cove.  We hadn't been on a dive since our certification dives almost a month ago so it was a little stressful, but we got to see some cool stuff.

 

 

 
For lunch we went to the Fish Fry and tried Twin Brothers.  The food was good, service was mediocre, kind of slow.

Dinner number 2 was at Montagu Gardens.  They picked us up at our hotel more than 30 minutes late, but we tried not too get too frustrated by that.  The driver gave us a little tour and history of the restaurant, he was hilarious, so we were in a better mood once we got to the restaurant.  Since we got there so late, we closed the place down!  The food was good, less expensive than the Poop Deck, similar quality.  The wine, drinkable but not so good.  R&C go the Guava Duff for dessert, they had been talking it up the whole trip.  I tried it but didn't love it.

The next day the whole crew went on the "off road" Segway Tour.  I was really nervous that I would fall off the thing, but I got the hang of it quickly and had a ton of fun!

As I write this summary it's starting to look like we were just wasting time between meals. :-)  Most of that time was at the pool, napping, or in the casino, you're not missing anything.

Our last (and best) dinner was at Brussels Bistro.  The mussels were sooo good, and I'm not really much of a mussels person.  The rest of the food was really good too, and it wasn't that expensive.  Once again we closed down the restaurant.  It's a small place but I'd definitely go back if we return to the Bahamas!

Busy Busy!

Weekend In Review

This past weekend I went to Pittsburgh to visit the McGourty crew, rather than B coming back to NY.  The weather was perfect!

On Friday night we caught some live music in Market Square (and had some beers), dinner at Seviche (highly recommend the Drunken Sailor mojito), and dessert at Sharp Edge.

Seviche was particularly good.  We had the Avocado and Corn Seviche with salmon and the Asian Tartare with tuna from the Seviche Bar and the Pulled Chicken Tostada from the Tapas menu.

We went back to Sharp Edge for lunch on Saturday.  It was good, but gave me a stomach ache.  Apparently I can't eat so much fatty bar food anymore :(

Saturday evening we did the Gateway Clipper sightseeing cruise.  Did I mention the weather as perfect?  The narrator was really good too, very informative and entertaining.  As is typical, we forgot our camera, but I did get this shot with my iPhone:

After the cruise we had dinner at Church Brew Works which is a very cool brewery in an old church.  The food was tasty, especially the Chocolate Mousse Cake.

Workout Update
Tonight I had my first Cross Fit ON-RAMP class.  We got a decent workout, but the focus was really on learning the basic exercises and proper form.  Still thinking I'm really going to like Cross Fit - next class is Wednesday!

Weekend Adventures

Not only did B and I have an adventurous weekend, Rudy did too!

Some people seem to be having trouble viewing this video but it's worth a shot.  Rudy was the star of the News12 Westchester news segment on the Doggy Olympics at Best Friends!

For those who can't see the video, a gratuitous Rudy pic instead, cause he's just so cute!

Sleeping!

Now for the human adventure...
B and I went to Club Getaway with a couple of friends, J & M.  Despite raining most of the weekend, it was a lot of fun.
I really wanted to trapeze, even managed to psych myself up for it, but got rained out both times.  B was, as usual, unnaturally good at it even his first time.

When the sun came out, the lake was pretty nice.  The water slide was definitely a popular activity.  Even I tried it, I swear, even though there aren't any pictures (B was in the water with me).

We also did a "Fun Mudder" which was fun, and muddy.  And of course there was the bar...
The food was really good, and there was plenty of it.  We'll be going again, I think, hopefully we'll get a less rainy weekend next time!


Finally, a bonus Monday Night Meal - Chicken & Cous Cous

We had some leftover whole wheat cous cous, so I reheated that and added some steamed french cut green beans.  On top I put breaded chicken and with a little bit of jalapeno hummus.  Not too bad!

Weekend in the Windy City

We finished off this crazy week by taking Friday off and heading to Chicago for the weekend.  We went mostly to visit some friends of ours who moved there about a year and a half ago from New York.  We had a great time - here's a review of what we did!

Friday (record setting 102 degree day):  We got up super early and to catch an 8:15 flight out of JFK.  Thanks to the time change we were at O'Hare by 10am.
Thankfully our friends live right near the blue line, so we jumped on the "L" and made our way to their place.  We relaxed and cooled off for a little while, had a quick lunch, and headed to Millennium Park to take all of the obligatory touristy pictures like:

A picture of ourselves (and some strangers) reflected in The Bean.  People were laying on their backs under the bean and doing all sorts of crazy things for creative pictures.   


Then we braved the heat for the Chicago Architectural Foundation's architectural boat tour.  This was a great way to get a sense of the history and layout of Chicago.  They also had really tasty Raspberry Vodka Lemonades.  Proof we really did it:

Then we went "home" to cool off (did I mention it was 102 degrees??).

We started the evening out getting drinks at Haymarket Pub & Brewery.  The beer was good, as was the flatbread appetizer we got to justify sitting at table.
For dinner we went to Nellcote.  This is a new restaurant just a few blocks from where our friends live.  They serve small plates (like tapas) and everything we got was delicious.  Favorites were the rib-eye, robuchon potatoes, and baba ah rhum (bread soaked in rum) for dessert.  The wine wasn't bad either - we had a Malbec, not sure of the specifics.
We had to wait a while when we arrived, despite our reservation, so they comped some sparkling wine and an appetizer pizza for us.  Totally forgiven!!  The people watching was great too, some very questionable wardrobe choices to be seen!
Our last stop was supposed to be the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building.  But, when we got there, the line was crazy long.  So instead we went next door to Disotto Enoteca in the Senaca Hotel to kill some time.  This place was really neat, one of my favorites of the weekend.
After about an hour and another bottle of wine, we went back to the Hancock building and right up to the Signature Room.  We just stayed for a few minutes to check out the view (oh, and the best view really is from the ladies room):

We tried to get some pictures with us in them but we're not such great photographers, especially after a couple bottles of wine.

Saturday the weather was much cooler.  We slept in and kicked off the day having lunch at Giordano's for stuffed pizza (we got sausage and pepperoni).  Oh my, so tasty.
We walked off some of the pizza by trekking past Navy Pier over to Oak Street Beach where they have a little bar/taco shack where you can sit and relax.  After soaking in some sun we headed home for a nice long nap.
We wanted to go to Aviary for drinks before dinner.  However, you have to email them in the morning and hope your email is "randomly selected" for a reservation.  Ours were not.  So, instead we first took a car trip around the city to see the remaining sites (Wrigley Field, etc).  Then grabbed dinner in Greektown at Athena.  This restaurant's roof opens so the dining room is basically one huge patio.  The weather had cooled down so it was a beautiful place to enjoy our dinner outside with a great view of the Chicago skyline.
To close out the night we went to Market Bar for a nightcap.  This is the place to see and be seen if you're a 20 something year old, scantily-clad, woman; a really drunk guy; or celebrating a bachelorette party.

Overall we had a great time and can't wait for our next visit.

Thanks again to A & V for hosting us and being our tour guides!