On Sunday, Daniel turned 26. I know, he’s old. I tell him that every day.
He’s one of those people who really doesn’t need anything, and if he wanted something he would buy it himself, so I was totally at a loss over what to give him for his birthday. In the end, I decided to go with experiences over possessions, and I’m so glad I did, because we had a fantastic day together.
We woke up in the morning and took the dogs to Central Park so we could watch our friend Jayme run the More/Fitness Magazine Half Marathon. Of course, we had to support with some signage.
Before we even spotted Jayme, we heard her. “Nice,” she said as she laughed and sped by.
Congrats to Jayme on her 1:50:00 finish! Now that’s nice.
We returned to the apartment and made our now-favorite weekend brunch of gluten-free blueberry pancakes. With almond butter and maple syrup, of course.
The first stop planned for Daniel’s surprise day was the NYC Vegetarian Food Festival. We got there, though, and the line was blocks long. We didn’t have time to wait before the real event of the day, so we grabbed some free KIND bars from the KIND truck and decided to walk from 18th Street down to Tribeca.
We got some coffees from Irving Farm on the way.
Thankfully, the sun came out and the day was gorgeous. Our walk was more of a ramble and lasted almost 2 hours. We stopped into a few shops, including a bike shop so we could dream about this summer’s wonderful bike rides.
We finally made it to our destination: New York Vintners for a Wine 101 Class. We were greeted and immediately given glasses of prosecco, a very good start.
The class was awesome. The guy who led it, Jesse, was really chill and the whole thing was as unpretentious as a wine class can possibly get. It was pretty much perfect for us, since we knew very little about wine going in. I still know very little about the wines discussed after the first twenty minutes or so, because I got a little tipsy thanks to all the tastings. Oops.
I definitely had to take advantage of the snacks provided, and that KIND bar came in pretty handy on the way home, too.
The class was really enjoyable, and I actually feel like I can talk about wine now and not feel like a total idiot. Daniel’s just glad I have some new wine vocabulary. He found it odd that I used to describe red wines as either “meaty” or “not meaty.” (Does anyone else know what I’m talking about here?)
Anyway, we took home a bottle of wine to have with our birthday dinner, and it was deliciously fruity. And decidedly not meaty.
Another very happy birthday to my darling. Here’s to many more celebrations together.
