Another year, another trip category for my blog. I’ve been busy this 2011 with grad school, so my big trip this year is fairly tame — that is, it’s not international, and “only” a little over a week long. But it’s still much anticipated and it’ll be grand. I’m wasn’t quite sure what to call this trip as we’ll be visiting San Francisco, New York City, and Philadelphia, but the “SF/NYC 2011″ seems to capture the two big parts and the bi-coastalness of the adventure.

I’m actually already a few days into this one at the time of writing — things have been so busy I haven’t gotten a chance to post about it until now. I guess I could go back to Christmas day to really mark the beginning of my travel.

I visited my sister Marla and family in Orange County on Christmas. Sure it’s only an hour or so south of my house in Santa Clarita, but still, it’s something. That was fun and then just a few hours later, the next morning, I hit the road for San Jose.  If I want to be more specific, I’d say it was actually my girlfriend’s  house in Santa Clara, just north of SJ. We attended her high school reunion that evening at a bar in Cupertino. Some of her familiar friends were there and I enjoyed meeting a few I had only heard about until then.The next day, the travel north continued.

This brings us to December 27 and San Francisco. We didn’t even get into town until the late afternoon, but was was plenty of time to join my sister and brother at one of favorite Mexican food joints in the city, Papalote. After a delicious pescado burrito, we visited one of SF’s Christmas traditions — Tom and Jerry’s house. It’s one of the most extravagantly decorated house’s I’ve ever seen and it’d been growing in popularity (and decoration) for years now. They even sell a sort of behind-the-scenes/story-of DVD about the house. We impulsively picked that up and later watched it to inadvertent laughs from the content and direction of that wacky documentary.

The next morning, December 28, Jennifer and I had a 7am flight to New York City. It wasn’t fun getting up that early, but hey, it was for a good cause, right? We metro’d over to my sister’s in Battery Park, Manhattan to unload our bags and make plans for the evening. We knew we’d end the evening with a screening of Home Alone and a “lovely cheese pizza just for” us. So, on that note of italian(ish) food, we decided to visit Little Italy for a salad and appetizer. Yelp led us to Caesano’s on Mulberry Street. It was a bit busy, but it’s a charming (if touristy) little place and we had a salad, some wine, and split a dish of lobster ravioli. In an unrelated, but timely, note…it was really cold last night with the wind. Mid 30s. We braved the cold to make it back here, and called it a night with Kevin McAllister making a mess of the Wet Bandits.

This morning, Thursday, we’re taking it was and have a lunch this afternoon with a former-coworker of mine who happens to be in town. But now, time for breakfast.