So while we had just done a 7 hour road trip to the middle of Ohio and parts of Amish Country; we took the very next weekend to head out to New Jersey & New York City with some good friends of ours: Lizzy & Joe. We added some pins for sure on this trip, though we’re just now working on getting the pictures up, but the part of the trip I think you’ll want to note, is a quaint little Thai food restaurant in NYC called Peep.

It is an interesting name for sure, but you don’t find out why until you are there. It seems like any other small tight NYC establishment, with some statues and such displayed in glass on the wall surrounded by mirrors all on one side of the restaurant. Well as it turns out, all those mirrors are actually the walls and door of the bathroom, and they are in fact 1-way mirrors. What do I mean? When you are in the bathroom, you look right through the walls into the restaurant, making it seem as if the entire restaurant can see you; I thought it was really cool, and tried to get a picture, but the lighting wasn’t good enough for a simple light-exposure picture, and then unfortunately using a flash just causes a giant reflection of light off the mirror/window. While you find it awkward at first seeming like everyone can look right at you in the bathroom, it also becomes very fun if you have a table facing that wall to stare and wave when people go in.

Peep aside, we spent a quick night touring through some well known areas of the city like Rockefeller Center, Times Square and more, but then spent the next day and a half catching some rays and walking around New Brunswick, New Jersey and the Jersey Shore, and the local area around there. I really didn’t think the water would be as warm as it was that high north, but it was really comparable to what you get on the Gulf Coast and Florida panhandle most of the year, so that was nice. The beach itself was packed as everyone is likely trying to get in one last little bit of summer. We used the pay public beach which is fine for us, even as crowded as the sand was, it was mostly sunbathers which meant the water wasn’t all that crowded. There are all these great houses/condos etc. around the area, and we figure renting one of those might be great, but just how much does it cost to live there you might wonder? Well we looked it up, and you can be ready to drop 1.3 million to land one of those places… so… good luck with that.

We just got the “Y Mountain” pin added over the weekend, but look for the Jersey Shore and some NYC pin pages to get added this week as well. In addition to that we’re starting to contemplate a huge trip to a completely new state that desperately needs some pins, so be on the lookout as we can hopefully hit the half-way point of our U.S.A. state count!