A few months ago, D and I decided we wanted to use some of our Southwest points for a little weekend adventure. We spent a few weeks trying to entice friends to go with us and thankfully John and Emily decided they could join us. The icing on that cake is that John had enough hotel points from his auditing days for us to stay for free and D had enough leftover Southwest points for all four of us to fly for free. It was the ultimate good deal.

We spent most of our whirlwind weekend wandering the city and eating good food. My kind of trip. Now that I’ve been to London and Paris, I think I can say with confidence that there really is no place like New York City. It’s crowded, loud, dirty, but most of all it’s just impressive. I think my favorite parts were the simple parts. Wandering in the Flatiron District, stumbling onto FishsEddy, and then discovering Maysville, this southern-inspired restaurant/grill where we spent half the evening telling our waiter about our friend Russ from Alabama. Apparently Russ is our only point of reference for the entire southern United States.

I’m so thankful we took this trip mostly because it meant spending the weekend with John and Emily. I think we all felt a bit spontaneous about the whole thing and we did a lot of laughing. I’ve added some of our instagrams. It was just too difficult to carry around the big camera, but I will give D credit for the picture of the Rockefellar Christmas tree. What can I say, the man has an eye for things.