After meeting up again at Rockefeller; Tim had to go, and everyone except Kitty and Judy headed back to the hotel. The plan was to drop off stuff, change, and meet Ben’s friend, Will for dinner at 9. Since we didn’t get back to the hotel until 8:30, that didn’t seem like a great good working plan.
We were ready to go by 9 and called a taxi to get us there. I originally thought that we ended up with a gypsy cab, which the guides say not to take because they rip you off. Now I’m not so sure anymore, because I later found out that the NYC yellow cabs couldn’t pick up from NJ anyways; so maybe the taxi that we rode was supposed to have no distinguishing marks? Anyways, we negotiated a fare of $55 + toll to get to the restaurant and made it there about 9:30PM.
We met up with Will (and his gf later), Judy and Kitty at the door. It turns out that Will knew Judy because they work at the same company! Even though we were late, and had reservations, we had to wait for a bit. We ate at Virgil’s Real BBQ where I had a Half BBQ Chicken which had what looked like blackened/burnt skin, but was actually pretty good and savory. Pauline had the BBQ Trash Riblets, an appetizer that ate like a meal. All in all, too much food and the place was a little too dark. That explains the less than stellar photos, since I didn’t bring my camera out.
Immediately after dinner (and by that I mean at like midnight), we said our goodbyes to Will & gf, and taxi’d down to the meatpacking district for some clubbing at AER. This could have turned out troublesome because Nelson had some dirty runners and I forgot to pack a nice shirt (but fortunately had dressy shoes). I was packing…an umbrella though. In the end there wasn’t any problem at all, nor were we searched. We paid our $20USD cover (ouch), checked our coats for $6USD (ouch x 2) and bought some $10USD drinks (ouch x 3). That was expensive, but I guess was inline with what I had read about. The club itself was tiny, but the DJ was decent (although too much hip-hop).
After clubbing, we were fortunate to flag down a taxi van to take us back to the hotel. We thought that it might have been difficult to get a van since we didn’t have any taxi company numbers, but we saw 2 within 5 minutes. We again ran into trouble because the driver didn’t seem inclined to drive over to NJ, he quoted us a $90 trip!! That was ridiculous because we could’ve just taken 2 taxis for $45 each (the quoted rate from the concierge at the hotel). We eventually negotiated down to $50, but we still felt ripped off because the meter said $15 by the time we got to the hotel. But the more important thing was that we were now able to get some sleep!
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