Last week Lisa and I went to New York for the wedding of our friends Lena Park and Ben Grenier. This will be Lisa’s second time in New York, and a welcome return for me. Because of the wedding, I also had a great chance to see a bunch of friends from grad school. We did this vacation pretty quickly, arriving Thursday evening, and flying from New York to Dallas on Monday, then back to Tokyo from Dallas on Thursday. That gave us basically three days in New York. We basically had a bunch of errands to run (shopping) but on Friday we were able to spend some time at the MOMA. You can see a picture with Lisa by Starry Night and Warhol’s Marylin Monroe as proof. It is really amazing how many world class famous paintings are in that building (and how many more in storage?) We also swung by M1-5 in the evening for a get-together with Lena and Ben and lots of friends.

On Saturday we took a trip down to Princeton, primarily to visit our friends Ron and Michelle and their super cute boy Evan, but also to swing by some of the local favorites. For me, that primarily means Halo Pub, a great ice cream place. Strangely, Princeton has more ice cream parlors than bars. Michelle is convinced that the Bent Spoon is the best ice cream in Princeton, and of course you can’t forget Thomas Sweet if you are talking about Princeton Ice Cream. So we decided to go for the rare Princeton Trifecta: ice cream at all three places. For dinner, we swung by perennial favorite Hoagie Haven.

We started at Thomas Sweet, where Lisa sampled their sugar free frozen yogurt. I had brownies blended into strawberry ice cream. Little Evan loves ice cream, which he calls “ice see”. He also loves trucks, and even since spending a day with Evan, every time I see a truck now, I shout “truck!” We walked over to The Bent Spoon, and had some interesting ice cream there. Lisa tried the Avacado and Mango, I had a scoop of chocolate (excellent) and blood orange sherbet. They were all very good, I loved the chocolate, thought the avacado was a bit strange, and liked the blood orange sherbet but would have preferred a traditional strawberry or other type of berry. The last stop was Halo Pub, where I had more traditional strawberries on chocolate. Even though I was pretty full of ice cream, Evan didn’t seem to be slowing down (Ice See!) and we did need some sort of dinner, so we went over to Hoagie Haven. Lots of our Princeton friends just love Hoagie Haven, and I like it as well, although I don’t go out of my way for it. Lisa enjoyed the steak hoagie (we split a half) as well, but probably doesn’t see the attraction that some of my friends have for the place.

After spending a great day with friends in Princeton (see the shot of the two of us in the flower gardens) we took the train back to New York, which was a great contrast with the trains in Tokyo. Slow, not necessarily on schedule, and perhaps not as clean as you would expect coming from Japan. She also noticed a few rats in the subway and commented on those. Another big issue with New York is that there are lots of stairs if you take the subway. Lots of stairs.

The day of the wedding, we had lunch at the Russian Tea Room. That was my first time there, and while people say it has really become a tourist trap, I thought the food was good, and I like the atmosphere. Who cares if it is a tourist location now? I ordered the trio of sliders, and was disappointed. Lisa had the Beef Stroganov and was not. We split the borscht. The tea was very nice too – I am going to drink more tea now. We have great teas out here in Japan, I can’t deal with the caffeine in coffee and soda, but tea seems to be ok. After dinner, we headed uptown to Columbia, and then over to the wedding.

The wedding was at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, a beautiful church on 71st. The ceremony was shorter than I expected, and beautiful. It seemed like a fairly traditional Catholic wedding to me, but I’m not super well versed on traditional weddings, so I won’t try to analyze the wedding aside from saying that it was a great ceremony and seemed to do the job.

The reception was at Del Posto downtown. The dinner was delicious, with great speeches by friends of the lovely couple, and the bride’s twin sister.

After the wedding, we flew the next day to Dallas to visit with my family for a few days. My great sisters set up a baby shower for Lisa since they are not common in Japan. We had a great turnout of friends and family at the party. One of the highlights of the trip was getting to spend time with Alana’s son Scout, who has grown very big!

Our Aunt Laura made some delicious cupcakes for the party, and the Butlers were gracious enough to bring sandwiches and other dinner foods. Don’t misunderstand; we don’t have Butlers, but Jerome and Sydney Butler did come to the party and brought the food. Alana and Jana also bought a bunch of white baby onesies and fabric markers, and the guests drew great designs for our little boy. We’ve got a whole bunch of fashionable clothes for our baby now.

Our mom, who has Parkinson’s disease, really perks up when little Scout in the room. It was great spending time with mom and Scout, and we also were able to get a few pictures of the whole Evans family together. I don’t think we’ve had the full family together for a few years, so that was also very nice.

We had a short trip, but it was packed with friends and family. As always time just seems to fly, and now here we are back in Tokyo. I’m hopeful that once we have our little boy we’ll be able to see family back in the States again, but it might be a while before we feel up to the task of a 10+ hour flight with a little baby. Alana and Scout seem to have managed really well though, so maybe we will be able to do it also. At any rate, it was a very nice vacation! Many thanks to all the friends and family for taking the time to see us, and congratulations to Lena and Ben!