Esme’s First Trip to NYC

This past week was too busy to write anything. Esmé and I started our Saturday night on a Virgin American red eye flight to JFK which got us into NYC bright an early Sunday morning at 8am. Shortly after arriving we met up with my friend Jessica who traveled up from DC to meet Esme and play in the city with us.

After an uneventful flight, meaning Esmé slept and I did not, and after she learned how to take the personal entertainment remote out of the seat arm rest and play with the touch screen TV we landed. Then it was off to the hotel, and to spend the week in Manhattan.

I forgot how much I love the city, and Esmé seemed to feel right at home. Here’s the weeks abridged version:

Sunday night, Jess and I went out while Godmother Elizabeth and Godmother Mimi watched Esmé. That was actually the first solo non-baby dinner and night out I had since Esmé was born. I forget the name of the restaurant, but it was great and we sat outside in the NYC night air.

The next few days were spent running around the city, getting stuck on subways, meeting with the usual suspects, planning for our press announcement and dinners out with co-workers and partners.

Here are some highlights:

Esmé now is officially crawling, although quite slowly. Point being, she is mobile. She crawled around in circles on the hotel room bed while I was in meetings. Quite exciting and quite frightening. Either way, I’m proud of little Esmé.

Monday night, I had dinner with our CEO and a co-worker down in Chinatown at a little restaurant that you would never find or ever know about unless someone took you there before. It was called Nice Green Bo, or formerly New Green Bo. We ate little pockets of soup, and the food was amazing.

Tuesday night I had dinner down in SoHo at Alta (click on Alta to read about it) with 2 coworkers, some partners, and it was fantastic; absolutely wonderful.

The next night I met up some co-workers at Indochine where we interviewed a potential hire (and watched a film shoot), and then headed off to a private club called Norwood (click on Norwood to see photos of where we were and read about the club). It was founded by a bunch of musicians/London-ites who had had enough of the SoHo House being so crowded, and they invited some media folks to become members. One of my co-workers being just one of those folks. It was awesome, very quiet and we sat outside in back while paper lanterns danced in the heat above us (reminded me how much I want to open a SoHo-like House out west). From there we walked two blocks over to the Meat Packing District planning to head to… the Hotel Ganesvoort (recommended by Billy, the door man at Norwood). Of course there was a line outside so we didn’t ever make it in, but I was able to look up and see that the room I stayed in last time. It had occupants, or at least someone had left the light on–maybe I did. We crossed the street and decided to hop into the SoHo House to celebrate the week, and our press announcement (announcing 8 new partners and an accumulated additional 55MM users!). Then we got stuck on the train on the way back uptown–police activity they said.

Then meetings the next day and we rushed off to JFK to board our flight home which sat us on the runway for 2 hours and dropped us down in SF at 2am. My gracious boss carried my luggage around and held Esme while I dashed to the restroom–I doubt he knew what he was getting into when he hired me.

Huge thanks to Elizabeth and Mimi!!! Without them I could not have gotten through the week!!!

Friday was back to the office albeit a bit later than usual, and now our Saturday has been filled with a stroller trip to the Farmers Market, reading books, practicing crawling, chewing on toys (Esmé not me), and lunch sitting outside in the sun.

Photos from NYC below…

~ by worldofesme on July 19, 2008.