End of a Loooooong Week...

Last night was a pretty busy Friday night, after a very long week.

After work Abi, Nadia and I went for tea at a place called Cowgirl in the West Village, apparently it's featured in Sex & The City (Abi is now the unofficial Sex & The City expert of New York after her and Nadia went on a tour!). It's a Western theme restaurant (as you could probably have guessed by the name) and is famous for it's 'Christmas in July' - you can get a Christmas Dinner if you really want one (although in this heatwave, it couldn't feel any less Christmassy). It's a fun little place, the drinks are served in jam jars, there are antler chandeliers and there's a little tuck shop selling penny sweets and little toys. The food was mighty fine, and we discovered a new delicious delicacy - Rattle Snake Bites - they're jalapeno peppers, stuffed with shrimp and wrapped in bacon! They're delcious!

After stuffing out faces with ribs and steak we walked up to the Highline Park. It's the first time we'd been there at night, it feels very different, it's subtly lit (a bit too subtly in areas) and the view of New Jersey is lovely and twinkly. The Standard Hotel looks far nicer when you can't see it all, the windows being lit up and the fancy bar on the top floor sparkling away, made it look very atmospheric.

Luckily we got there just before it closed, so we were able to walk along half of it before they closed the park - then we walked through the Meatpacking District, where we saw this rather lovely car...

Then we walked to the river and up to a place called The Frying Pan to meet Kelly (who's visiting from Arkansas) and her friend Laura and Amelia. The Frying Pan is a big boat that's permanently docked by the river (with some other boats attached by walk ways) that's been turned into a bar. It's great, it just seems to keep going and going lots of different walk ways to seating areas, lots of old boatish things decorating the place, colourful fairy lights, even an old train carriage! There are train tracks running from the pier onto the boat so it must have been an old cargo boat or something.

We actually saw the Frying Pan from the boat during the Mr. Scruff cruise, but we didn't know what it was - we just thought it looked like a great place to go, so it was to discover where and what it really was. It was heaving and a really unique spot - I'm hoping we'll be able to go back there, maybe not on a Friday night though (and not with people from work!).

There was one more thing no Nadia's To Do list - The Empire State Building, so after a quick drink we got in a cab and headed across town. Nadia very kindly got tickets for Abi and I to go up to the top, to say thanks for letting her stay. It was lovely to go up again, and it was Abi's first time.

New York looked beautiful twinkling at night, and with the saxophonist playing some smooooooooth jazz it was a lovely and calming place to be on a Friday night.