Phil's New Toy

Another weekend in the city. This time we came home with more than just fruits and vegetables. We stopped off in Brooklyn to pick up Phil's latest toy (and birthday present for the next 2 years...). It's a 46" Samsung TV. Luckily we were able to get it at a good price - thank goodness for good deals in Chinatown.

The TV is now definitely the most dominant feature in the living room. This should keep Phil entertained for quite a while - hopefully... ^__^

Signs of Bahama

Some amusing signs from the Bahamas:

For some reason "give way" just sounds so much friendlier than "yield".

Proper instructions for how to stop traffic. Don't forget to thank the drivers!
(Sign text:
For your safety
When crossing each lane:
1 Extend arm to alert drivers
2 Wait for cars to stop
3 Keep looking for cars
4 Thank drivers)

Oh so true - although the birds are going to be eating anyway whether you feed them or not.

(Sign Text:
Please do not drop cigarette butts on the ground.
Fish come out at night to smoke them and we are trying to get them to quit.)

Sign inside the daiquris place across from the hotel.

Fist Day of Spring?

It's snowing! And here I thought it was supposed to be the first day of spring...
Luckily, by this afternoon you couldn't tell it had snowed at all. Let's hope there are no freak snow flurries in May...

Bahamas

I'm not one for bachelorette parties, but luckily for me my sister is. She planned a four day trip for the two of us and my mom to Nassau in the Bahamas! We stayed at the Sheraton with an ocean front view from our room. Not to mention a view of all the pools and hot tubs.

The sunrise in the morning was amazing...


This was my first time in the Carribean, so I took tons of pictures. Way too many to post here, so I'll try to just hit the highlights...We arrived in Thursday late morning. After we dropped our stuff of at the hotel we decided to take a walk to check out the local markets. One of the nice things about the Bahamas is that you're never far from a beach, so as we walked along what seemed to be the only main road on the island there were plenty of beaches you could access from the road. We stopped at a public beach called Sandyport.

On Friday we hopped on a ferry to Paradise Island to check out Atlantis, which is an extremely expensive and over-the-top hotel/resort - complete with water park, aquarium and casino. It seemed very family friendly, but a little pricey at $600 per night. Luckily for us you can walk around the property for free!

We payed $35 each to check out the aquarium.

On Saturday we went snorkeling. We boarded a catamaran that took us an hour or so out to a more remote area to do some snorkeling.


As we were sailing to our destination I caught a glimpse of this tiny island. I was convinced that was where we were headed, but it wasn't...Although the captain informed us this was Gilligan's Island - the opening shot of the Gilligan's Island TV show. I've never seen the show, so not sure if it's true, but a beautiful looking island none-the-less.

This was our destination island - Rose Island. This is where we dropped off the non-snorkelers (aka my mom), before we headed back out to the reefs to snorkel. My camera isn't waterproof, so unfortunately no fun pictures of the actual snorkeling. Although I can tell you the water was surprisingly cold. It probably would have been warmer if we were there in the summer months.

After our snorkeling adventure we headed back to Paradise Island. We stopped off for some lunch where we tried the infamous Conch Fritters (pronounced "konk"). Conch is what's inside the ginormous Conch seashells that native Bahamians sell to tourists along the harbor. I'm not a big seafood person, but they were pretty good. And, according to one of our ferry "guides", they're like nature's viagra...
After lunch we headed over to the Versailles Garden and French Cloisters, which are also located on Paradise Island.

We headed back to the Atlantis resort to do some gambling (nothing serious, just the slot machines), and I turned $1 into $51 with one spin at the penny slots! Gambling is always more fun when you win. We celebrated with some Ben & Jerry's ice cream...

On the way back to the main island we took a slightly shadier looking ferry - the New Daisy Star. I'm not sure if the captain of this particular ferry really new how to drive a boat...As we were heading into dock we knocked into a total of 3 out of the 3 surrounding walls. The first 2 hits weren't as bad, since we just grazed the concrete on either side, but the last hit was a head-on collision as you can see in the picture. My favorite is the red streak of paint from the boat that was left on the concrete wall. Although, looking at the surrounding paint on the boat, I'm thinking this might not be the first time our captain had crashed the boat...Added with the fact that the ferry started smoking people were fleeing off the ferry as quickly as possible.

That evening we stayed in the down town area and had dinner at the "Fish Fry", which is a strip of restaurants and bars along the harbor where most of the locals hang out. Since all the restaurants here back into the ocean the fish is pretty much as fresh as it gets. We headed to a place called "Twin Brothers", which came highly recommended.

I don't eat fish, so I can't tell you from first-hand experience how the fish was, but my mom and Mandy seemed to enjoy it. Here is the broiled grouper that they ordered.

We had to head out Sunday afternoon, but we made a stop at the daiquiri stand across the street from the hotel. Nothing like a daiquiri made with fresh fruit to top off a great trip.


Bye bye Bahamas...

Despite the freak ferry boat accident, the trip was amazing. Everybody was so friendly! Things were slightly more expensive in general (about $1 more than what it would be in the States), but I guess that's to be expected considering all of their goods and materials are imported.

After spending most days stuck at home it was nice to see the sun ^__^
Check out more pictures here!

Joe's Ginger & Little Italy

On Saturday it was back into NYC to hang out with Phil's family and run some errands.

First stop was lunch at Joe's Ginger in Chinatown. We were originally planning on eating at Joe's Shanghai since Phil was craving their soup dumplings, but the line was super long and we were too hungry to wait. As Phil puts it, Joe's Ginger is like the illegitimate child of the Joe's Shanghai restaurant chain, and it's only 2 stores down from Joe's Shanghai. We ordered the soup dumplings, or "juicy dumplings" as my mom calls them. Not the best soup dumplings we've had, but hopefully it satisfied Phil's craving.

After lunch we were heading to check out a travel agent for our honeymoon when we passed by a giant line of people waiting for their big movie debut. Disney was looking for extras for a new movie (not sure which one), so there were people lined up around the block. I must say the demographics of the people in line were crazy - the vast majority were old Chinese ladies and middle-aged Chinese men...I'm not sure what kind of extras Disney was looking for, but it makes me worry for their movie...

Once we finished at the travel agency our next stop was Little Italy for a sweet tooth fix with his cousin Lucia and Aunt Chan. While we were walking we passed by a place called Snacky's where they had the hugest cupcake I've ever seen...Phil seemed skeptical to buy dessert from a place called Snacky's. Their cupcakes were very colorful though.

We ended up stopping at a place called Caffe Palermo. They had a giant sign that boasted "best cannoli in the world". It's a big claim to make, but the sign did it's job - it reeled us in.

Aside from their cannolies they had a bunch of other desserts on display and their menu had pages and pages of dessert selections.

I ended up getting a chocolate cannoli. I can't remember when was the last time I ever had a cannoli, so it's hard for me to say if this really is the best in the world, but it was pretty tasty. Just don't try to cut into it with a fork...

Phil ordered a hazlenut gelato. Now this was some awesome gelato. They should change their sign to say best gelato. Not sure if it's the best gelato in the world, but definitely worth the trip if you're ever in little Italy looking to satisfy a gelato craving.

And there was also Lucia's plate of assorted cookies. Phil was still trying to figure out how dessert and coffee for 4 could end up costing almost as much as our lunch for 6...

Before we left we stopped by a place called Ferraro's so Lucia could pick up a cake. This place had even more desserts lined up for display.

They even had little mini wedding cakes! So cute! Which reminds me, we still need to figure out our wedding cake...I think the giant cake with the chocolate covered strawberries on the left is the one Lucia ended up ordering. Mmmm...chocolate covered strawberries...

Maloney's

Thursday night we headed out to Matawan for dinner at Maloney's Pub & Grill. I know, dinner out on a weekday. What can I say, Phil and I like to go crazy sometimes ^__^

One of Phil's coworkers, Mo, is actually part owner of this newly opened pub. So I tagged along with Phil and a couple of his coworkers to grab a bite to eat and check the place out.

We drove down to the pub and met up with Mo and Joanna. Here they are posing next to the pub-warming plant Joanna brought.


Now that I'm going through the pictures, I probably should have taken more pictures of the place itself...but I did take a picture of the beer list, which by the way has 250 different types of beer. Who knew there were so many different kinds of beer! (clearly I'm not a beer drinker).

Despite Phil's aversion to alcohol I convinced him (with some help from Mo and Joanna) to share a beer with me. We ordered the banana bread beer. I thought it was pretty good, but Phil thought it just tasted like any other beer.

Then it was time for the food. I ordered a dish called "Bangers and Mash". There were 3 different types of sausage over a mound of mash potatoes. Careful - one of the sausages was very spicy...

Phil had the Shephard's Pie, which according to Mo no one has ever finished...until now...

I can't remember what Mo ordered, but I think it was a steak sandwich of sorts, with the infamous tater-tots. Don't tater-tots just bring you back to grade school cafeteria lunch? ^__^

Joanna had the corned beef sandwich. Doesn't the melty cheese on top look good?

There was tons of food, so by the end everyone still had food left on their plate (except for Phil of course). Now, normally when we go out to eat Phil usually finishes whatever I don't. But apparently he must have been pretty hungry because he finished everyone else's food too. Every time the waitress came by to take away a plate Phil kept telling her he was still eating. She must have stopped by at least 4 times. In fact, she was so impressed by Phil's eating skills she came back with a hand-made "Maloney's Champ!" sign - complete with little pictures of food at the bottom. Leave it to Phil to make his eating skills known wherever he goes.

Snow Day!

Jersey got hit with close to a foot of snow today. Can you believe it's still snowing this much in March?! And here we thought we were getting away from all the snow when we left Ohio.


Here's a picture of the snow in our front yard. Phil spent almost an hour shoveling the walkway and dusting off the car before he left for work.

The snow was so bad in NY the entire NY public school system called a snow day. Apparently the first one since 2004. It's funny because in Ohio this amount of snow would have been considered light. I guess they just don't make snowstorms on the East Coast like they used to...

Fujiyama Mama w/ the Lins

Phil and I finally got a chance to take my family out to try Fujiyama Mama. The trip was highly anticipated considering the so-so Japanese food we had last weekend. Plus it's half-price lunch on Saturday. What could be better than half-price sushi?

We drove separately, so Phil and I got there first after running some errands. We waited just inside the front entrance where they had an entire wall with pictures of their different sushi dishes. They have some interesting sounding sushi rolls, like the Mind Eraser (tuna, salmon, lobster, avocado, jalepeno & crab meat) and Funky Monkey (eel & banana). The sushi rolls we had weren't quite as crazy...

Phil was very excited for half-price sushi.

Now, some people who know us may be surprised that Phil and I actually ordered sushi considering neither of us really eat fish (I know, not very Chinese/Taiwanese of us)...But surprisingly they have quite a few non-fish-eating friendly rolls.
I had the Calamari roll, Sweet Potato roll (tempura style sweet potato), Yasai (aka Veggie) roll, and Spider roll (soft shell crab).

Phil had the California roll, Shitake Asparagus roll, Shrimp Tempura roll and Scallop roll.

My mom and my sister ordered together, but don't ask me what they ordered. I know there's a Spider roll in there, a squid roll of some type and I think salmon...

Very tasty. Maybe next time we come back we'll go for the half-price hibachi!

After lunch I had my sister come over to help me with wedding invitations. Never have I used so much ribbon...This is a pile of our wedding invitations in progress. You can see the huge pile of ribbon spools in the background.

Almost done...I even enlisted Phil's folding skills. He's so helpful ^__^