Fashion week, Theresa? Half your wardrobe is made of flannel. I know, I don’t deny it! But it was my dear friend Jacki of Jack Attackk Clothing’s first showing at New York Fashion Week, so I pulled out my multi-purpose space boots and then had to borrow something.

*Dirty Hotel Mirror Selfie of said boots and a great JAC gown. I fully intended to take nice photos later, but was too busy clapping lightly into one palm as one does.*

I have been trying to reduce my air time, so I took the train from Haverhill to NY. It was actually lovely, minus a scramble between North and South Station in Boston. (Why is that so convoluted??)

It was a weirdly warm February day in New York, and I was happy to be on the road again. I met up with my dear friend Jacki’s dear husband Doyle who is also my dear friend Doyle, and we set off in search of lunch. He’d never been to Times Square proper, so I cajoled him into a pit stop.

*Listen Doyle, no one LIKES Times Square, but you gotta go at least once!*

I did my favorite travel trick, which is googling “Bon Appetit [insert place here].” Once again, Bon Appetit delivered with Margon. BA declared Margon as “the place to go in Times Square when you just need some damn lunch,” and we just needed some damn lunch.

Margon rocked it with delicious and meaty Cuban sandwiches. It was a cash-only spot, which led to me fishing for change at the bottom of my purse, then us only being able to afford two sandwiches and one drink… but they took pity on us and threw in Doyle’s Fanta pro bono (while certainly judging us for being friggin’ tourists).

After a late lunch, it was time to get ready for Jacki’s show! A small cohort of Billeric..ians descended upon the art gallery tucked into an industrial building. It was hotter than the hinges of hell, and the party got started fashionably late (har har)… but then it was happening! Jacki was showing at NYFW!

After a herculean effort to get 20+ gowns back to the hotel on a time crunch, we had a late dinner and snacks at BeetleHouse. It’s a Tim Burton-themed bar with menu items like “Edward Burger Hands” and “Giant Peach Salad.”

It was fun, and the food was surprisingly good! We toasted to Jacki’s first NYFW show, and cheers’d to many more.

The next day, it was winter again. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen NYC in the snow, and it was ADORABLE! I headed to Brooklyn in the morning to get brunch and catch up with my friend from college, Lucie. It was magical to see her and hear about all her adventures.

I wandered around snowy Brooklyn for a while, then spent some time with my high school friends Lizelle and Alberto. Once again, great to catch up and eat delicious foods. I also got to see Berto’s under-construction apartment and meet his lovely partner, Kelli. Aw, we’re growing up!

Up next was an after-times bucket list item, visiting The Met. This was added to the list after falling hard for The Goldfinch. I only had an hour, which ended up being a joke in such a huge museum.

A painting in the Dutch Masters gallery mentioned in The Goldfinch. The Goldfinch painting wasn’t there, but I actually have seen it before on a previous fangirl quest in The Netherlands.

My final to-do in New York was to see a show. I was enchanted by the winter wonderland, so I walked the two miles through Central Park to the Theater District.

One of the myriad pluses of solo travel is you can get a last-minute ticket for cheap, which is how I found myself sitting in the second row at Wicked. (I had this same thing happen at Hamilton in 2017. Highly recommend getting over feeling awkward and just going to things alone once in a while, you’ll survive).

I hadn’t seen this musical before, and for some reason in my head was like “ugh, great, The Wizard of Oz, here we go.” WRONG, I loved it, I blubbered like a baby the second curtains went up. Just being in a packed theater watching the best of the best back doing their thing was enough to trigger the waterworks… but it was also the 15 year anniversary of my mom’s heart attack that day. I got into musicals because we had season tickets to North Shore Music Theater. I was especially a wreck during “For Good:”

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine

Sap, huge sap, I’m a mega sap. Lucky for me, there was still a mask mandate in New York to hide me ugly crying. I left the show feeling both totally depleted and completely filled up. It was the perfect show for me to see that night.

The temperature dropped like a rock and I hoofed it back to my hotel after the show. I may have caused a minor fender bender on my walk back (sorry, had the walk signal y’all, and it was COLD!) I packed my bags after a fun weekend and got ready for part two of my adventure: Arizona.

where: new york city//ancestral lands of the wappinger and munsee lenape
when: february, gloves would have been a good choice
how: i stayed at yotel nyc which had a hospital room bed with a remote and a non-functional robot luggage person, would stay again?

ny fashion week

deserts and desserts

up to tucks