Birthday in the City

I'm finally getting around to blogging about my big birthday night in the city!

We made the mistake of making a dinner reservation for 7:15. That meant going into the city at the WORST possible time of day. We left our house at 5:15 and by 7:15, were sitting outside the Lincoln Tunnel in stand-still traffic. We called Buddakan and they were willing to hold our reservation for 15 min, but we knew we wouldn't make it through the tunnel in that time, much less find the restaurant, find parking, and walk in by then. No way. Luckily they had a 9:15 open up so we grabbed that time instead.

Once we got to the city, we took our time getting to the restaurant, took a drive through Chelsea and by one of the rivers. Couldn't tell you if it was the Hudson or the East River. haha!

Keith was so excited to see the city, I was acting like the expert since I'd be in the week before, of course neither one of us had any idea what we were doing. We thought we would try to find a parking garage, and then find a bar to have a few drinks until time to go to Buddakan. Well, we ended up in a bar called VYNL (see the photo at left). There was 80's music and the menus were made out of old album covers, the bathroom was a shrine to Justin Timberlake (no kidding friends, the wall was a mosaic tile formation of Justin's face). We're having drinks and decided to have this spicy calamari appetizer, when Keith leans in real close (I think he's going to be sweet and kiss me) and really quietly goes "is this a gay bar?" I burst out laughing, apparently he was being checked out and sure enough, we had stumbled into a fabulous gay bar!

Then we went to Buddakan! We took one picture (see below) but it was really dark in there and almost impossible to get a shot. Here's the website, if you click on tours (top right portion of the website), you can see better pictures: www.buddakannyc.com

Some of you may know that is where they shot the rehearsal dinner scene from the Sex in the City movie. I was SO excited to be there!

Dinner was AMAZING. I kept telling Keith to get out of the way when we were standing in the bar waiting for our table, cause I wanted to spot celebrities. LOL

The edamame dumplings were SO GOOD. I've never seen Keith so enthusiastic about asian food. We made friends with the people around us, frankly I've never seen Keith talk so much either. He looked in his element believe it or not. The guy on my left was from DALLAS and the girls on our left were from Scotland, here in NY on a "holiday" as they call it.

BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!!!