Trip to New York! No, not the City

My cousin graduated from high school on the 28th, so we flew out there (near Philadelphia) to see her graduate. It was great to see my dad's side of the family (that I don't see that often), and to see two of my good friends from college too! (One lives in that area, the other came down to hang out with us!). Then we went to Ithaca (NY) to visit with my sister who lives there. Here are some pictures and things about the trip.

Ok, this is not from the trip, but the day before or something like that. This is my invention, I call it the Samoa Latte as it is inspired by the Samoa Girl Scout cookie (or Caramel De-Lite cookie). It is 1 pump mocha syrup, 2 pumps coconut, & 3 pumps caramel. Yumm!

This is a mint chocolate chip water ice from Rita's, an institution in & around Philly (and some other places on the East Coast). If you don't know what a water ice is, it's hard to describe. Wikipedia-it and see what you find.

I just like this sign. You may need to enlarge the pictures to read it well.

There's this place in Ithaca called Waffle Frolic that has waffles. There are different batters (including a vegan and a gluten-free batter), and tons of different toppings. This is a buttermilk waffle with apple butter and fried bananas. If you are ever in Ithaca (aka you visit someone who goes to Cornell or Ithaca College), you MUST go there.

We went to the Cayuga Creamery and they have a Tasting sampler thing where you get to choose 5 flavors. The description said that they would be kiddie scoops, but I'm pretty sure that these were actually full-sized scoops. My sister helped, but I totally ate it all. The flavors (Bottom left around to top left): Sea Salt Caramel, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Cake batter, Cookies & Cream, & Cookie Dough. I especially like Cookie Dough because so often ice cream makers put in a few cookie dough pieces and tons of chocolate chips, but this one didn't have chocolate chips so it was all about the cookie dough. The PB&J ice cream really tasted like a PB&J sandwich (with a glass of milk, so my mom says).

Went to the movies there and  saw these Cars 2 posters and got really excited! I really might just go to the midnight showing of Cars 2. There's one at the Spectrum...maybe even more places. I'll check again when it's closer to the 24th.

In Waffle Frolic, there was student art on the wall that was for sale. I LOVED this piece, but of course it was sold. It's a really great picture for a fair price ($100. There were definitely smaller pieces that were more expensive)

Another waffle: Buttermilk waffle with yogurt and blueberry-raspberry compote. SO GOOD!!!

Pictures of the two glasses that I have sandblasted at the Corning Museum of Glass (an hour from Ithaca). I call them my Pixar glasses. I did the one on the left (Finding Nemo) the last time that I was there, and I did the other one (Up!) this trip. They're kind of hard to take pictures of...the Finding Nemo cup has fish on it and says "Just Keep Swimming." The UP! cup has a house with tons of balloons attached on one side, and on the other side there's a dog with the word "SQUIRREL!" Sandblasting was fun. Essentially, you decorate the glass with stickers & masking tape, and then sandblast it then remove the stickers. The glass under the stickers remains clear and the rest takes on that frosty look. So you can really only to outlines/profiles of images, but it all works out. If I go again, I'll do cars. Or maybe A Bug's Life. There were stickers for those...