Girls Weekend 2026, Friday, October 9. New York City

Friday, October 9, 2026

We slept kind of late this morning—at least for us—and didn’t get up until after 8:00, then spent a couple of hours doing absolutely nothing productive. No laptops, googling, or writing. Just chatting, catching up, talking about what we might do today, changing our minds, and generally enjoying one of those gloriously unstructured Girls Weekend mornings we love so much. We finally started getting ourselves together around 10:00 and left the house at about 10:30 in search of coffee and breakfast. Jason (our host) had recommended a place called Milk & Pull, so that became our destination. Lori had a bagel and cream cheese and a mocha; I had a bagel with lox, cream cheese, capers and tomatoes, and a vanilla latte. The coffee was tasty but not hot enough - why is it so hard for fancy coffee to be served hot? We took our breakfast onto the train and headed for the New York Transit Museum, which is here in Brooklyn. What a GREAT place! We wandered and explored for at least three hours and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The visit to this museum cleared up a bit of my confusion involving my adventures yesterday. When I exited the airport and was trying to get onto the shuttle into the city, I proudly pulled out my old MetroCard, which I had actually remembered to pack (yay, me!) However, when I put it into the machine it was promptly rejected. This was confusing but I figured you needed a new MetroCard every year or something. Today at the museum we learned the true why: the MetroCard has gone the way of the 8-track tape and is now defunct. Sigh.

Everyone knows I love a physical map (I even still purchase a new road atlas every year), so before leaving the museum we went into the gift shop looking for an actual hard-copy subway map. No luck, but we were told that we might be able to find one at a major MTA station where there was an actual human being working rather than just the automatic turnstiles. We had also learned at the museum that because of the beautiful wall mosaics and other decorative features, Borough Hall station was one of several New York subway stations on the National Register of Historic Places. It was a large station not far away, so off we went, hoping to kill two birds with one stone (by the way, this saying offends my soft-hearted, creature-loving friend Katy, who prefers “feed two birds with one scone” but I think it loses a bit of the effect.)

We found Borough Hall easily, went down to the tracks and immediately saw some really cool tile work, but we couldn’t find the tile art that supposedly helped make the station historically significant. Back upstairs we went, where we found an actual MTA attendant and asked her about it. Not only did she direct us to the art, BUT SHE ALSO HAD SUBWAY MAPS! YAY!!!!! Physical maps successfully acquired, we went back down to find the artwork and take photos.

Over the past several years, when traveling with her husband Tom, Lori has developed a personal pose for photographs that Tom has labeled the “Glory of Lori” series. They travel quite a bit and have one of these photos of her in many places. The pose involves standing starfish style, usually in a wide-open setting. We created an adapted version of the pose that involved Lori mimicking a mosaic clothed cheetah (or leopard?). We may be getting older, but we are always open to new Girls Weekend traditions.

After experiencing and enjoying all this historical culture, we were ready to find a coffee shop or somewhere to sit down for a while. As we were walking along looking for one, Lori—who has decided she wants to improve her street-photography creds—saw several police officers standing in a group looking very New York-ish and asked one of them if she could take his picture. He obliged and then asked us to take another one of him and his friend and send it to him. Then he told us we should go down Montague Street to see a great view of the skyline. We never found the view, but DID find a very interesting coffee shop centered around strategy games. We got a snack and sat down to rest for a while, enjoying the atmosphere until the place was suddenly infiltrated by an entire group of kids for an after-school program and it was clearly time to go.

Our intention at this point was to go back to the Airbnb, but after walking only about a block, we were distracted by the big, beautiful St. Ann’s Episcopal Church, which is currently under renovation. There was an attached school where we entered and asked if we could go inside the church sanctuary, but no luck. No one was there to allow us in, but we may try again tomorrow. We set off again, but just when we thought we might actually make it home, we passed one of those wonderful little NY city grocery stores with the quintessential display of gorgeous, colorful, fresh fruits and veggies spilling out onto the sidewalk. Lori wanted to take photos of the beautiful produce, so we stopped, and then we went inside. Gasp. What a delightful little store! It was one of those packed-to-the-gills neighborhood groceries where there seems to be something tucked into every available inch. We wandered around for quite a while, bought a few things, and finally emerged to resume our journey home.

Finding the subway station turned into its own little adventure. We zigged, zagged, and studied the map. We went one direction, then another. Then possibly back in the direction from which we had just come. Three or four course corrections later, we finally located the correct station and made it back to our Airbnb. Once home we put away our groceries and decided that a little furniture rearranging was in order. There was a HUGE television in the bedroom which clearly belonged in the living room. I mean, who puts the giant TV in the bedroom and leaves the living room without it? Obviously, Jason had been waiting for us to come along and correct this decorating error. So, we moved it, and it was a much better arrangement.

I made dinner while Lori did her word games and downloaded the day’s photos onto her iPad, and then we ate while watching the Unabomber movie. Once it was over we realized that we were quite sleepy, so we called our husbands and started winding down for the night, but first, we needed to toss the states! Remember, we forgot last night, and there are only ELEVEN STATES LEFT after this trip. ELEVEN! After all these years, that number is almost impossible to believe.

We decided I would do the honors first this year, and so—as is our custom—I gathered the remaining wooden puzzle pieces and tossed them into the air. Uuuuuuuuuuup they went, and then dooooooown they came. How many would land face up? How many states would be deleted for next year? Lori is rooting for Arizona, and I would kind of like Missouri because I could drive and we wouldn’t have to rent a car and I’m in cost-cutting mode at the moment. As is turns out, none of this mattered. The puzzle pieces landed, and we looked. And then we looked again. In all the years we have been tossing these ridiculous little wooden puzzle pieces around hotel rooms, condos, Airbnbs and wherever else Girls Weekend has taken us, this has NEVER HAPPENED on the first toss. There was no elimination process, No suspense lasting several nights. No rooting for one state while trying to pretend we are perfectly willing to accept another. And no second toss, because exactly one state had landed face up. Girls Weekend 2027 will be in NEBRASKA!