Monthly flight pass

So I was reading Gizmodo this week, and they posted a deal by JetBlue where you can buy what amounts to a 1 month flight pass for $599 to anywhere in the US. So I figure if I can make two west coast trips, I could make this ticket worth my time. Any veggies have some free time over the weekends between September 8th till October 8th and have a place for me to stay? :P

Dinner at the Big Apple

It’s been a while since I had gone to NYC, so I jumped at the opportunity to go when Blue Orca invited me to join the EVACs gang for dinner up in Manhattan this past weekend.  We had quite a big group together as 11 of us circled around two tables connected to each other at A La Turka, a Turkish restaurant if you didn’t imply from the name :P  Since most of us hadn’t been to a Turkish restaurant before, picking out what to eat became a slight chore, but the store manager was kind enough to come out and work with us to put together an large appetizer and entree order that everyone could share together.  We also ordered two pitchers of Sangria (one red win and one white wine), which I found pretty refreshing to drink considering I’m not the biggest fan of wine, but I’m guessing the addition of the fruit diluted the alcohol to make it easier (at least for me) to drink.

The two giant appetizer plates that came out for each end of the table consisted of various “dips” (humus, bean salad, yogurt, a spinach-tasting dip, etc) that everyone could dive into using these large “disks” of bread that the waiters were quick to replenish once everyone started tearing into their basket of bread.  The appetizers went quickly, but the two giant entree plates consisting of lamb, beef, and chicken kebabs along with some rice and veggies plates came in just in time to continue the feast!

There was also a fish order put in, and it was quite the spectacle seeing it brought over on a flaming tray!

We figured out later that the first was covered in some sort of breading that was set on fire, and the manager used a mallet to break open the breading and cut up the fish.  While the presentation was cool, the fish unfortunately didn’t taste as good.  Fortunately the kebab meat platter had a lot of good meat to go around so the fish didn’t put a damper on the dinner.

As we finished up dinner, it was brought up that we’d all head over to Serendipity 3 for desserts.  But a giant hoard of people waiting outside greeted us as we got there, which added up to a 2 to 3 hour wait.  So we decided to keep walking around, and eventually we ran into Dylan’s Candy Bar.

This store was probably the dream child of Willy Wonka’s other persona named Dylan, because practically every candy and sweet you could think of can probably be found at this store.  Heck even the stairs had candy imbedded in it!

Before we browsed around, we went to the second floor cafe to get some desserts.  I settled on the Perfectly Peanut Butter Sundae, which was good but there was sooo much chocolate and peanut butter syrup in the tall plastic cut that the sundae was served in that right now I’m still tasting the sugar.  But this was nothing compared to the monster that was the 10 scoop sundae…

Even with 5 people working on it, I don’t think they managed to finish it :P

Fresh off our sugar high, we looked around the store and found some interesting chocolate bars and candy themes.

 

There was also a display of celebrities signatures on boxes containing their favorite candy.  The funniest one was the half eaten Payday bar with Bill Clinton’s signature :P

All in all it was good to see the EVACS group again and walk though Manhattan.