My Whirlwind Weekend Trip to Upstate NY

Wow – last weekend kicked my ass in a major way. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a really quick trip to the East Coast and even though this one was only supposed to be 4 days, it was then cut to 3 days and I ended up with a surprise trip to Las Vegas. Say whaaat?! Let’s rewind!

One of my very best friends and college roommate, Kate, is getting married in upstate New York in October and this past weekend was her bridal shower. After I was able to score a ticket, the other bridesmaids and I decided to throw in her bachelorette weekend to minimize travel for everyone. It worked for me! I knew I wouldn’t miss either event if I could, so I booked a quick trip and counted the days until my departure.

I flew out of Honolulu late Wednesday evening and all day Thursday and arrived in Albany pretty late Thursday night. Kate picked me up from the airport and we grabbed some dinner with her fiance at a great little Hibachi/Chinese/Japanese spot. I devoured broccoli and rice, along with a few delicious sushi rolls, and headed home. I was freaking exhausted and slept like a rock!

We woke up the next morning and my first order of business was getting coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts! We sent in our order via her app and got down to business stuffing wedding invitations so she could get them in the mail. It brought back a lot of memories from planning our wedding and honestly – ZERO FOMO from me. I hated wedding planning, but maybe I’m just a weirdo? But it was fun helping her get some stuff checked off the list.

That afternoon, we grabbed our friend Allie from the train station and headed straight for a tequila bar for drinks and dinner. So delicious! Our other roommate, Carly, was taking a later train from NYC up to Albany, so she joined us at a country bar before we all crashed around 3AM. I think that’s the latest I’ve been up, awake and out since college, LOL!

Saturday was the shower so we woke up, got dressed and met Kate’s sister at the venue to get everything set up. Everything turned out beautifully and it was a brunch buffet. What’s not to love?!

After the shower, it was time to watch the Penn State/PITT game. We all love PSU football (her shower theme was navy and white!), so we curled up on Kate’s couch and watched the game. A nice PSU win was just what we needed to get the fun bachelorette night started! We got dressed and headed to Saratoga for dinner. We ate at a delicious Mexican place named Cantina before heading out to the bars for the evening!

I was still taking antibiotics this weekend from my crazy infection, so I didn’t really let loose as one might normally for bachelorette festivities. That said, it was still SO INCREDIBLE to see my college besties after so long. I’m already counting down to her wedding next month..Woo Hoo!

While I was originally supposed to return home on Monday, I got an alert Sunday saying that due to Hurricane Irma, and because my flight was routed through Atlanta, I may want to leave a bit earlier. I changed my flight to Sunday morning, flew from Albany to Atlanta and then Atlanta to LAX. While en route to Los Angeles, we were delayed 40 minutes. The flight attendant made an announcement for anyone connecting to Honolulu to please get off first. That’s me! But sadly, myself and 21 others still missed the connection because the boarding doors on the flight to Honolulu had already been shut. Don’t worry though – my bag still somehow got loaded and on that flight. #majorsideeye

We were offered the option to sleep on the floor of LAX until the next flight to Honolulu at 8AM, or get on a flight to Las Vegas and fly out a bit earlier on Hawaiian Airlines. I wasn’t wild about either option, but opted for Vegas since I had never been there. I was EXHAUSTED and finally made it back to Honolulu yesterday. Whew! All of that said, I still think Delta is the most reputable airline in the industry despite feeling like a total zombie about 24+ hours of travel.