SmorgasmicseewhatIdidthereburg, A Speakeasy, A Sunset & A Pretty Swell Life // #CCTakesNYC, Part III

Agenda Item #1: Today marks my last day at NBC, and the bittersweetness is coming on a little strong. I'm excited to see my parents and to take naps on a whim and to do nothing for a straight week except reach over to play the next episode of whatever I'm watching. But this summer at NBC has also opened my eyes to so many things going on in the media world that I've been thrilled to be a part of. (And there's also casually walking by Seth Meyers in the elevator bank and nearly literally running into Jimmy Fallon on my way to get lunch.)

Agenda Item #2: Last night, I Skyped one of my best friends from middle and high schools. He's been away on his church mission for the past two years, and it was crazy to see how everything and nothing have changed in this time. 

Agenda Item #3: SMORGASBURG.

On Saturday, Cassandra and I boarded the L train and let it drop us off right by Smorgasburg. For those of you who don't know, Smorgasburg is a food market hosted by the Brooklyn Flea. When it's in season, it's open every Saturday and offers a variety of New York food vendors for you to sample.

I know you can read the sign. Sorry.

Cassandra made a beeline for the corn-on-the cob, her favorite. It was grilled and smeared with butter, lime, cayenne pepper, and cheeeeeese of course. She finished it in like seconds, so I'm assuming she liked it. I, on the other hand, was obsessed with the mango lemonade we got from the same stand.

Basically it was mango juice with lots and lots of mango pulp, and a subtle tinge of tartness from the lemonade.

But we shan't dawdle when more food's involved. Next...

A porchetta sandwich. Really, really, really good. The meat was so flavorful and perfectly cooked. I bow down.

But the best part about Smorgasburg? The views. I mean, look at this!

(I mean, the New York skyline's pretty cool too, right?)

Moving along...

Cassandra decided on a crawfish tostada, which she kindly let me steal bites from. As a crawfish lover from the Gulf of Mexico region, I will say that this is one way I've never seen crawfish be cooked before. But I like it! It's meatier than tilapia, but I don't love shrimp very much, so I think it's the perfect seafood taco for me.

The sliders stall caught my eye, and so I went and got myself a meatball slider. Yum!

Finally, we polished off our palates with a maple doughnut and a maple lemonade, and said a mental 'thank you for letting me love you' to Smorgasburg.

We spied a bridge far off into the distance, and made our way over to it, thinking it was the Brooklyn Bridge, neither of us really processing that it looked nothing like the ol' BB and we were geographically nowhere close to it at all.

But we were in Brooklyn, and here was a Bridge, so it's gotta be, right?

Not right.

But we were too lazy to make the trek allllllllll the way over to the other side of town, so we decided to walk the Williamsburg Bridge instead.

A little grungy, a little edgy, a little artsy, the Williamsburg Bridge was definitely a fun walk. My only qualm was that the fencing went all the way up, so even though there were spectacular views of the entire skyline from the Freedom Tower to the Empire State Building, it wasn't actually documentable.

And also, it was quite a walk. We had to walk half the bridge before even getting on the bridge, and so by the end of that whole adventure, I was hoping that this actually in fact worked:

Harrryyyyy, is that you?!

Needless to say, I think the teleportation workers were on strike that day, because try as I might... we could only rely on our own two legs to get us home. And a little bit of a fuel from a White Russian cupcake, but whatever.

After making a pit stop to get boba and almost falling asleep on the bench, we went home and climbed up to the roof to get some fresh air and Jeni's salted caramel ice cream.

Oh, these self timer pictures. Totally natural!

Totally.

Not. Staged. At. All.

----unpictured: a napful interlude----

At 3pm, we had used both of our phones to call in and make reservations at Please Don't Tell because the phone line was so busy. Please Don't Tell - the worst kept secret of the speakeasy scene. And thank goodness we made those reservations because when we arrived, the wait was more than two hours.

Slightly gimmicky place, but a lot of fun.

It's hidden inside a hot dog joint (more on that later). You go into the phone booth, pick up the phone, dial 1, and wait for them to tell you what to do (HELLOOOO, IS THIS THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC?).

A few sips of a very expensive drink, and a great chat with a lovely couple sitting next to us from my hometown in North Carolina later...

To the hot dog joint - Crif Dogs - next door!

Happiness is a sausage wrapped in bacon surrounded with sour cream and avocados.

I should hate myself for loving every single bite of this, but actually... I'm pretty proud. Such a good hot dog. But Cassandra said she wanted pizza...

And I'm glad she did, because my Hawaiian pizza was bomb.

And then I said, "want an Insomnia cookie?" Of course, she replied! So we went and shared a soft, doughy snickerdoodle - my favorite.

At this point, it was like, there's so much shame involved already, why don't we just go with it and turn it up one more notch? 

What's wonderful about best friends is that when talk turns to dreams, it's really no holds barred. The kind of person you want to fall in love with, the career you'd ultimately like to have, the places around the world you'd give anything to see. And Cassandra and I have had many a conversation about all of this, so when she said, "hey, want to know another one of my dreams" - I knew it'd be a good one.

"I've always wanted Chinese takeout in NYC."

Girlfriend never lets me down.

So then we ate subpar grease and sodium (my mom is going to kill me for eating not-top-notch Chinese food) while watching Enchanted, and you know... in our own way, we did live happily ever after. At least, so far.