A trip to the big city

This weekend I decided to head into the city to see a friend of mine play bagpipes for a fundraiser for his band.  We took the train down and it was a nice ride along the Hudson.  While he was practicing with the band the two non-players among us hung out in the city.  We wandered around Central Park for a while, then went to the Guggenheim museum.  It was a lovely afternoon.  Then a friend of mine from Texas met up with us and we had a drink, then headed to the bagpipe concert.  The style of bagpipes they do is from Brittany, and their kind of band is called a bagad.  When we walked in we encountered a bunch of french speaking guys wearing t-shirts that said "Bagad New York."  My friend had no idea what was going on and thought I had brought him to some strange terrorist hub supporting Baghdad.  Ha!  Their show went well and I learned how to folk dance to Breton music.  After a while my friend and I decided to go get some food, so we left the festivities and went to his local bar.  I then proceeded to have way too much to drink and ended up passing out at my friend's apartment rather than taking the late train back with everyone else.  Woops!  Unfortunately this means that I mostly wasted away the weekend since I slept late on Sunday before taking the train back.  But the lesson learned is that it really is easy to hop a train down to the city, and I should try to do so more often.  Now I get to play catch up like crazy to try to get things done before the holiday!

 

Central Park

 

Guggenheim