Hail, hail, the gang is (mostly) here!

Andi and Me, photo credit to Lo

On Saturday I woke up quite excited; this was the day Lorenzo would arrive from Italy, and it was also the day that I would finally meet Andi after a year and a half of being close friends!!  I was also super excited to see Brenda, who had come in all the way from England to join me in New York!

We had a relaxing morning, and then in the afternoon I got ready and headed back down to JFK to greet Lo; this time, sans luggage, which of course made it a better trip.  I got there easily, and made my way from the terminal 3 airtram around to the section where you would greet people coming out of immigration for international flights.  It took longer than I would have liked, but finally, there was Lo!!  It was great to see him and we made our way back to the airtram; this time heading to the Long Island Railroad to get ourselves into Penn Station in Manhattan to meet everyone for dinner.

ummm...this one would have been so nice if his eys were open. :-(

We found our way to the restaurant to find none other than Andi waiting outside!!!  I'd waited for that moment a long time and it was fabulous to finally be able to hug her in person.  We headed into the restaurant, found ourselves at my "usual" table, and settled in as even more people arrived; Rachel, Bob, Brenda, and her two friends Beatrice and Tom.  Dinner was fabulous, as was the two "hurricanes" each Lo, Andi and I had!  :-)

After dinner we headed to the Irish Bar called McCoy's which is right down the street.  We spent more time laughing and catching up.  We left to head home, and ran into a little issue; the subway was no longer stopping at our needed stop!  It took me another 2 stops to realize that we just weren't getting ours, and we got out onto a freezing suburb, just Lo and I, with no one in sight.  We made our way around to the opposite platform hoping that another train would come by the other direction and stop at our needed station.  Finally, a train came by, and this time, stopped where we needed it to.  Finally we arrived back at the apartment, introduced Lorenzo to Beth and Chris, and we all went to sleep.