The Best-Laid Plans...

My friend Mayumi and her new boyfriend, Kevin, came to New York on Thursday. She had to pitch a financial education program she developed to the New York City chapter of a national non-profit organization Friday morning, then figured she'd extend her stay through the weekend at our apartment in Williamsburg. They stayed with us until Sunday afternoon when they flew home to San Diego, missing a major snowstorm by less than 24 hours. It was Kevin's first visit to New York. And they had an ambitious agenda that included: visiting midtown monuments from the Empire State building to Rockefeller Plaza; walking along Wall Street and around Ground Zero (the site of the 9/11 attacks) on the lower tip of Manhattan; shopping in SoHo; and, of course, seeing "The Gates" in Central Park before they were dismantled yesterday. In between, Kevin said he wanted to visit all the cool neighbordhoods below 14th Street (which is just about all of them) from Little Italy to the Lower East Side (where we gnoshed on spinach, sweet potato and cherry cheese knishes at Yonah Schimmel then walked down the block to Katz's for some NY hot dogs). And that's Manhattan. We also had big plans in our borough (Brooklyn) of bar-hopping our way through Billyburg.
Here's what actually happened. On Thursday, exhausted after an overnight flight sitting across the aisle from a mother and screaming infant, Mayumi and Kevin slept until 2:30, when I called them to see when they were meeting us for "lunch." The plan had been to meet for lunch and then visit The Gates. Needless to say, the plan did not happen. Mayumi spent the rest of the day (and part of the night) on my computer perfecting her Power Point presentation for Friday's meeting. We ate slices from Sal's Pizza, which is located three blocks away from our apartment, for dinner. And drank Guinness and Brooklyn lager from the bodega on the corner.
On Friday, they hit midtown while my husband and I went to work. Then we all met at home and nearly changed our minds about going out. But we had a reservation for 8:30 at a French bistro in East Village and two other friends from school meeting us there (my husband stayed home, nursing a bad cold). On Saturday, we slept till nearly noon (our dinner had lasted more than three hours, three courses, and two bottles of wine). And didn't get out of the apartment till 2. My husband brought home bagels and lox spread for breakfast.
We skipped lunch--unless you count the jelly bellies and Swedish fish Mayumi and I picked up later during a shopping trip through the Village. Mayumi and Kevin went to see The Gates. I went to the gym and Victor went to karate. Then I met up with them at 14th Street and we walked through the Meatpacking district and the Village--bouncing from boutique to boutique, ostensibly in search of a dress for Mayumi to wear to an upcoming black tie dinner, though, in the end, she only bought a bag of jelly bellies, while I netted two necklaces, a red turtleneck sweater, and a purple and black strapless shirt with hand-embroidered flowers.
We didn't get back to the apartment until nearly 8. And it took us another two hours, and a few beers, to go out again for dinner at Plan Eat Thailand--which is mistakenly spelled "Planet" in nearly every review and guidebook (rumor has it that the restaurant owner was forced to change it to "Plan Eat" to avoid a lawsuit from a certain Planet-something restaurant chain that, believe me, would never be confused with this place, but I digress..)
Our only Brooklyn bar-hopping consisted of hopping back and forth between the bar at PlanEat Thailand and a couch where Mayumi and I had secured seats while we waited for our table (yes, even at 10:15, there was a half-hour wait).
We didn't fare much better on Sunday. My husband and I got up around 9:30 but our guests slept in another hour and a half, despite the noise we were making in the kitchen beside them (they slept on a pull-out couch in the living room), grinding and brewing the coffee, toasting a bagel and washing dishes.
It took us another three hours to leave the apartment, which left us with exactly one hour and 30 minutes to get into Manhattan, walk--briskly--through SoHo, Chinatown, Little Italy and the Lower East Side, and have brunch. Which, in the end, consisted of us standing at the counter at Yonah Schimmel scarfing down napkin-wrapped knishes then hustling down to Katz's to scarf down some hot dogs (which Mayumi and Kevin impressively managed to finish before we'd even made it from the counter to the cash register).
Sure, we missed a few items on the list of Things to Do (hell, I still haven't done all the things I want to do in NYC). But the way I figure, that just gives them one more reason to come back.