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Oh, New York. This was the first time I'd been back since moving to Frankfurt, and I was a little bit worried that it would have changed, or (more likely) that I would have changed, that the fact that I like Frankfurt now would have lessened my love for New York in some way, as if there were only a certain amount of city love to be doled out from the pot. Ridiculous. On its own merits, NYC is still pretty much uncontested for my favorite city, and there are some other undeniable advantages to living there, proximity to Stone Harbor and therefore my family being chief among them. I'm immensely, ridiculously lucky to be living in Europe right now, but I'm certainly keeping New York in the back of my mind.

Having said that, New York is easiest to love when you have unlimited free time and unlimited money (the combination that is almost certain never to exist when you actually live there). For the days that I was there, I shopped and ate and hung out with some of my very favorite people. I went to Amanda's house for the Super Awesome Fun BBQ of Pan-Asian Delights, which was exactly as advertised! (I was the one who came up with the name, but Amanda and her family made it happen.) I spent a rainy afternoon at my favorite coffee shop in New York, 71 Irving Place. I gorged on guacamole and an it's-five-o'clock-right-freaking-here margarita at Dos Caminos SoHo, and inhaled three tacos at Pinche Taqueria as Frida Kahlo and her ever-elegant unibrow looked on. Most excellent of all, Amanda and I waited for Shakespeare in the Park tickets in Central Park on an unbelievably perfect morning, sipping iced coffee and gnawing on an H&H bagel and listening to a man play the Star Wars theme song on his flute as a parade of uptown dogs and their owners strolled past -- a uniquely New York morning in all possible ways.

We feared rain that evening -- if it rains, that night's show is canceled, and there are no rain dates -- but the weather held, and so we got to watch the bizarreness that is The Winter's Tale. Though long, it was a surprisingly entertaining show, and we were amused to note that the humor of mooning an audience is timeless.