Okay, so where was I?  Ah yes.  On Wall Street, which was under construction.  We were looking for the giant bull statue for the hell of it, even though we (Steve and I) were unsure if there was a giant bull statue in New York.  (There is… but we couldn’t find it.)

Around this time, I finally got to hear the voice of a fellow blogger (we’d eventually meet up later during my trek through East Village).  Our phones were running lower on energy than we were, so we decided in order to make it through whatever the night held in store for us, functioning electronics seemed important, and we returned to home base.

At the hotel, we plugged in our cells and due to the lack of sleep (this will be explained in the prequels), the Snuggies (this will be explained in the sequel) and bed were mighty tempting.  Yes, I typed “bed” with no “s.”  They only had a queen available (which I should probably specify is a bed size, seeing as how people might have preconceived notions about NYC).  Apparently, a four-star hotel according to Hotwire consists of this criteria: if they don’t have a pair of twins available (again – bed size), they’ll give you each a cookie.  A cookie that was prepared earlier in the day.  Possibly for the continental breakfast’s dessert?

But I digress, and as such, our digestive systems had processed those cookies long ago, so dinner sounded like a plan.  We asked the concierge to recommend a pizzeria (one that served booze was our only criteria).  He recommended one nearby – Angelo’s, on 55th and 2nd.  (Don’t I sound all local-y?  My confidence in understanding the map of the city ultimately proved to be a bit too confident.  Sequel…)

We ordered the flat-bread pizza and $6 beers.  Steve quickly learned that when the choices for $6 beers are Bud, Bud Light, and Bass Ale, you choose Bass Ale.  As we ate, we eyed the happy hour going on across the street ($3 beers!), and as soon as we finished, we headed over there for a few more (choices: Miller Lite, MGD, Sam Adams?  Sam Adams, of course!) and then back to the hotel to retrieve our banes of existence means of communication.

We headed toward Central Park to await our first fellow bar hopper – another Steve.  As we wandered the streets, we passed the bridge that Spider-Man battled on with the cable cars (I’m soooo cultured), and I missed the entirety of the quiet beauty that was the sunset that night.

As we began slinking in and out of a plethora of East Village bars, our group’s number grew to four with Tim, and five with Evan.  Eventually my fellow blogger met up with us after a lot of phone- and text-tagging, which was cool.  The hookah joint we were waiting to get into was taking too long, so we headed to another bar that carded people for some reason (nowhere else did).  In the sorta dark, sorta empty, martini-ish bar (what would be the opposite of a hole-in-the-wall?) we ended up at, I brought up Lost, I investigated something weird on the table with my fingertip (thankfully it was Guinness foam), and I think I even mentioned Twilight (the movie – not the book, as if that makes a difference).  Oh yeah… wonderful, wonderful Guinness was ordered around.  One guy selected a bottle of wine “with one glass.”  And mussels somehow ended up on the table.

Members of our group started parsing off at that point.  I recall a sliver of a diner that was stopped at by the solo wine drinker and that it amazingly carried no smell whatsoever, good or bad.  And somehow Steve and I made it back to home base.  (Taxi?  Subway?  Feet?)

I’m beginning to feel like this may be Uncle Sean’s Drunk Story Time all over again… So much more to go!