Two weeks ago I took off work and drove out to visit Franciscan University, my alma mater, because one of my closest friends, Deirdre, had flown into Pittsburgh from Chicago. We spent several days together visiting our dear friends at FUS and then drove back across Pennsylvania and pit-stopped at my house for a day before we continued on to New Jersey to visit another one of our best friends, Rachel. Rachel lives just outside NYC so we took the train into the city on Friday and spent the day exploring.  It was a full week and so very blessed despite the rather awful cold/flu we came down with half-way through. It was exhausting but oh so worth it. I have come to realize that quality time must be one of my top love languages so a whole week of quality time with some of my best friends in the world filled my heart up quite a bit.

I decided to bring my camera into NYC because the last time I was there I had just my phone and I have always enjoyed photographing this city. However, the nasty cold/flu bug that Deirdre and I had caught left us wiped out by the time Friday came around and so although I still brought my camera, I took a total of 50 pictures the whole day. That might sound like a lot to some people, but for me that’s an incredibly small amount but I just didn’t have the energy for any more than that! I guess that just means another trip to NYC should happen in the near future, haha.

It was Deirdre’s first time in NYC so we went to all the classics first: Central Park, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square. (Rachel and Deirdre and I shared an apartment our senior year at FUS along with our other bestie, Elisabeth. They were literally the best roommates a girl could ask for.)

We ended our day trip with a late lunch/early dinner in Little Italy, which I had never been to before and was delicious. I felt like I was in Rome again in our restaurant, so good and so much fun.

And of course I couldn’t talk about my visit out to Franciscan and not share pictures!

On Saturday we ended up crashing our household’s retreat and joining them for the afternoon and evening (which was amazing), we took a few pictures outside as the sun was starting to set and the glowly sunset beautifulness.

I didn’t use my camera for any other part of our trip but here are some of my favorite phone photos:

Xoxo,

Mary Kate