Here’s the thing about the trip to New York: Despite all the problems, the trip was actually a lot of fun.  The rain delay was kind of exhausting, but it added to the experience of seeing a game at Yankee Stadium.

We packed a lot into the two days we were in town.  Saturday brought shopping among the hipsters in Williamsburg, as well as an excellent lunch at DuMont Burger.  The evening was spent back in Manhattan, where we ended up watching Michael Phelps win his eighth gold on a large screen in Times Square.  We also had a quick but tasty dinner at Yoshinoya–yeah, it’s a chain, but we don’t have it in Minneapolis, so we didn’t feel like we were violating any of our trip rules.

One of the cooler moments of the trip came Saturday morning when I headed down from our room to get a first-person check of the weather.  The first thing I saw as I approached our hotel’s front door was a young woman running down the middle of Park Avenue, which instantaneously struck me as not the safest thing to do.  I stepped outside, and found the street filled with runners, walkers and bikers.  I’d stumbled across New York’s Summer Streets event, and just over an hour later Lisa and I would join the throngs temporarily taking over the street from the cars.  It was a very relaxing kind of awesome.

Sunday brought a visit to the ridiculously kid-centered neighborhood of Park Slope, as well as a few hours in Prospect Park.  (Upon entering Park Slope we started counting babies and toddlers as a joke, but quit after we realized the count was exceeding ten per minute.)  News that there was a Turner exhibit at the Met literally sent Lisa dancing around our hotel room, so of course we had to hit that, too.  We closed out the day with a good meal at Brasserie Les Halles, a nice restaurant one block from our hotel (and, oops, another chain), as well as a trip to Top Of The Rock.  Our scenic route to Rockefeller Center took us through Bryant Park, which brought the happy discovery of the Bryant Park Film Festival, as well as the what may be the best public bathrooms on the planet.

Friday’s attempt at lunch at Shopsin’s ended in failure after we got there too late, but at least we now know where it is for the next time we visit.  Much of the remaining afternoon was spent wandering around lower Manhattan, including an hour or so at Battery Park.

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So, in all, we did and saw a lot, and had a lot of fun.  In that sense, I’d have to call it a good trip.  In context of everything else that went down, though, I’d also have to call it a bad trip.  It’s weird–I’ve had good trips before, and bad trips before, but never both on the same trip.

You’d think they’d cancel each other out, but they don’t.  In that way, this trip was definitely unique.