the upper east side mansion

it started out as a normal evening at 5pm with a wine tasting extravaganza at an east village wine shop celebrating it's 1 year anniversary. some of the wine was good, some of it was not so good, but the huge cheese trays made up for whatever the wine lacked. we grabbed really awful sushi at jeollado. i do not recommend the place. we used a magnum of sake to wash down the bad food...probably not a good idea.

we stumbled into double happiness, the perfect place for sitting around in. it's cute, dark, and quiet with lots of seating. i always forget this place exists, but i highly reccommend it if you haven't been there before.

emily gets a call from her friend sam. "are you guys dressed nice?"
"um...we're all wearing jeans and heels?"
"okay, i guess you guys can come over then..."
"um...come over where?"
"5th avenue at 73rd. the guy had a dinner party but it's turned into a party party so you guys should come by."

we show up to the prime upper east side address and saw some drunk woman dangling dangerously, considering her obvious drunken state, over the gorgeous stone balcony. a man dressed in black with a clipboard scrutinized us before we dropped sam's name and then let us through.

i've NEVER seen anything like it. i swear the entire place was made of marble. it was four stories with a gorgeous winding staircase. we found out the rent there was 1 million a year. our host was worth some 300 million. the crowd was the totally average manhattan socialite crowd. totally NOT my kind of people. the models all coked up (of course) and the older women wearing their designers glanced at us in disapproval. clearly jealous of our youth, we were wearing, gasp! jeans!!!

but there were beautiful caterers running around with trays of canapes and a full bar with good champagne. so we stayed and drank the rest of the evening away, moving from room to room, level to level, private garden to lovely balcony. we finished the evening out at l'express, my favorite late night eatery. even at 4 and 5am it's ALWAYS bustling.

a long, drunken evening, for sure.