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Spent the weekend in New York City, working from our Google office on Friday and then going around the Big Apple for the rest of the weekend. I took plenty of photos of New York for your enjoyment.

Friday:

Took a redeye to JFK and then subway trains to the NY office, arriving around 9AM. The office is a lot different than Mountain View, primarily because they share the building with other companies and only take up a few floors. But, the floors are long, taking a good 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other. There’s a lot of Google-like characteristics of the office, too.

Sweet microkitchens:

From New York 2009

A great cafe, which served miso black cod for lunch!

From New York 2009

Nelson even caught me on webcam in the cafe. Can you spot me?

I know if I worked in the New York office, I would spend a lot of time here:

From New York 2009

There’s also an area with legos to play with. I really like the detail put into this lego-made Google logo:

From New York 2009

After work, I headed south on Bleeker street to meet my sister and fiance for dinner at Pearl’s Oyster Bar. This place is absolutely fantastic. They make some delicious fried oysters and an AMAZING lobster roll:

From New York 2009

From New York 2009

We also walked over to Magnolia Bakery for some cupcakes.

From New York 2009

Saturday:

Slept until noon and eventually made our way to Katz’s for some delicious pastrami sandwiches. Even at 2PM, the place was packed! Luckily, my sister and Anthony knew that the far wall was waiter service only, allowing us to bypass all the tourists in the line. This is probably my favorite pastrami sandwich – thick, tender pieces of pastrami.

From New York 2009

From New York 2009

We walked off that huge lunch by making our way to Rockefeller Plaza and spending the afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art. I won’t post all the pictures I took in the museum here, except this one:

From New York 2009

Yup, pieces of torn up paper. I like modern art, but seriously? I wonder how much MOMA paid for this.

Dinner was at Casa Mono. It’s a small, Catalan restaurant with some very nice dishes like fideos with chorizo and clams.

From New York 2009

If we weren’t full enough, we headed to Momofuku Bakery for dessert. These cookies were AMAZING:

From New York 2009

Sunday:

Met my high school friend Eric, now a med school student at Columbia, for brunch at Community Food & Juice. It was great to catch up with him and find out about life in med school:

From New York 2009

I then took the 1 down to Canal St., on a mission to buy some Japanese denim from Blue in Green. I ended up with a pair of Samurai 710′s, which are stiff as hell since they’re made of 19oz unwashed selvege denim. I’ll be breaking them in over the next year. By the way, if you need to use the restroom in SoHo, any Starbucks if a good option. However, be prepared to wait 20+ minutes, since everyone else has the same idea as you. Not fun. I spent the rest of the afternoon making my way up to Times Square, which was crowded as usual. Not sure why I went, there’s not much to see if you’ve already been there and tourists in New York for the first time take forever at the subway queues.

Final dinner was at Lupa, a delicious Italian restaurant:

From New York 2009

This spaghetti, though simply made with garlic, oil, and tomatoes, is the most amazing spaghetti you will ever have:

From New York 2009

Monday was back to the grind. I left my sister’s apartment in the upper east side at 4AM and made my way to JFK in an hour and a half. My flight to SFO was long, but I got some sleep, thanks to a recently purchased neck pillow. I then rolled into work and was back to the grind. So that’s the blog post for you. Whew, whenever I go to New York, I drop a ton of money on food. But, it’s so worth it.