Weekend Exploring

My cousin, Emily, flew in from Florida this week for a family wedding and decided to spend the weekend here in New Haven with me! I love when I have visitors, because New Haven is such a fun city and I love showing it off.

Because we are both over 21, we decided to grab a few drinks with my boyfriend, and another friend who was in town, Jenna. We started the night off at Pacifico which is a tapas bar in downtown New Haven. Pacifico is somewhat pricey for the typical college student budget, but is a fun place to meet with friends. I hear the food is amazing (it smells delicious), though I have never gone to eat. Pacifico is also neat because they play lots of Hispanic music and have a small dance space in case you get the urge to boogey!

After some good conversation and delicious drinks, we decided to make our way across the street to Bar. Bar is a pizza restaurant during the day that turns into a club/bar during the evening. The pizza here is legendary, especially the mashed potato pizza. Make sure if you go to Bar during the evening that you order your pizza early; by the time I got around to thinking about ordering pizza they only had cheese and peperoni left. After more conversation, and some seriously awesome dancing on our part (or at least we think so…) we went to another nearby bar, Black Bear.

All in all, Friday evening was a huge success and I was able to show Emily a great time in New Haven! New Haven is known for the happening night life, so make sure to hit up these three awesome spots. There are plenty of 18+ places as well in case your or your friends are not 21 just yet. Some of the 18+ clubs I know of are Empire, Elevate, and Toad’s Place.

If you are having a few drinks with your friends, make sure to plan how you are going to get home/back to campus. If you live on campus, there are many ways to get downtown safely: you can take the Yale Transit for free when you show your Albertus Student ID card or you can call a cab. Typically a taxi cab ride to the downtown area from Albertus is $12 each way. An easy number to remember for a cab is: (203) 777-7777.

The next morning even though it looked like it was going to storm, and New Haven was under a tornado watch, I decided to show Emily the breath-taking view from the East Rock Summit. Most of the time, when I take people to the top of East Rock I like to hike up, so they get the full experience. However, because we were short on time, and the weather was not predictable, we decided to drive up.
From the Summit you can see the city of New Haven and the ocean. If you look carefully into the distance on a clear day, you can even see New York City! Emily loved the view and we took quite a few pictures before heading back down the mountain.

Not only is the view incredible, but East Rock Summit also offers a wonderful field area with picnic tables and grills. On nice days you can usually find families having barbeques and picnics and students studying, enjoying the beautiful weather. It’s also a very dog-friendly area, so if you have a pup it’s definitely worth the trip!

Showing Emily around New Haven was a ton of fun! We made a bunch of new memories and I know she fell in love with New Haven, just as I did when I first visited.