Return to Ocean City

Just recovering from a crazy last few days in the US in time to catch my flight to Santo Domingo. It went roughly like this.

Thursday PM
Cram in final shopping and sightseeing - rowing on the lake in Central Park... thank you Anny for coming with me and making the afternoon so enjoyable.

Friday AM
Final Spanish lesson and preparations, go nuts about conjugations of "hacer" in particular, thank you Laura for your great teaching and giving me so much work to do. I hope that it's the start of something like learning the language - so what if I end up with an Argentinian accent.

Friday PM
Packing and organisation for Maryland roadtrip to accompany Mary (with Nadine and Megan) to the wedding from hell on Sunday (ex-s, cousins, really shouldn't mix). Rendezvous with the rest of the group to pick up the hire car and buy snacks

Saturday 2.00AM
Leave New York and head to Ocean City, MD to watch the sunrise (6.45am), mission is to keep Nadine awake while she does all the driving and somehow help navigate roads that I know nothing about.

6.45AM
Arrive in Ocean City, watch sunrise, get breakfast, play skee-ball (I lost to the girls a lot!), surprise my old boss by showing up in the store - visit memory lane, tell stories about the summer of 2000, swap life stories of the past six years, get nostalgic about the forgotten memory of signing the stock room wall. Visit my old flat (after remembering it was on 5th and not 7th street and feeling a sense of satisfaction at having had an address two blocks better than the one I'd imagined)

2.00PM
Arrive at Romancoke to drop Mary with her family, meet the world's most annoying pug.

7.00PM
Arrive in DC to visit Robin (friend of Nadine's) and go for dinner here which was fantastic... lovely sommelier who helped us defy convention and drink red wine with seafood, "What's a sablefish?", great people watching/bitching.

12.00AM
Crash on the futon

Sunday 9.00AM
Leave for breakfast in Annapolis (pretty little naval town, full of boaty types) which is within "airlift" distance of the wedding, and to visit the mall, my first since arriving six weeks ago.

2.00PM
Perform mission extracting Mary from wedding (involved me - mystery unknown man - walking across the reception during the speeches and leaving with Mary (who looked incredible) immediately after the last toast.

Rest of PM
Drive back to New York, "Sexy Back" getting us through the traffic and tolls and bridges (nearly blind Nadine and cause and accident after leaving the flash on while taking pictures in the car).

9.00PM
Meet with Masayo (another former room-mate, who's over from Japan) and grab dinner in Gramercy.

12.01AM
Sing Happy Birthday to Nadine on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) and arrive home a few minutes later to finish off packing.

Road trip pics coming soon, but I've got a plane to catch.