I love last minute vacations. They are always so much fun because they are spur of the moment. Yesterday I got home from an insane five days in New York City and New Jersey. The whole thing started last Saturday when the husband of a friend of mine decided to fly a few of his wife’s friends to New Jersey for a surprise birthday party on Wednesday. The plan was to fly in on Tuesday, go to the party on Wednesday and be back in Los Angeles by Thursday night. But as any fun weekend can go, I decided to extend my trip until today to get the most of my time on the East Coast.

The party was on Wednesday out in Red Bank. Since I was staying with Matt in Manhattan, we had to take the train to get out there. We got there just in time to get our reserved corner of the restaurant decorated for the surprise party, finishing up with some time left to bullshit before the guest of honor arrived. Once she did, though, it was quite the party. She definitely was surprised as she didn’t know any of us were going to be there and I’m sure it was quite the shock seeing people who were supposed to be on the other side of the country in New Jersey of all places just to give her a happy birthday.

After we were done with dinner and a few bottles of champagne, we moved the party down to the Stash, where poker had already started. Rather than played, we all hung out some more until the party broke up and then it was on to poker. Well, for everyone else. I was a little tipsy and decided to sit out. Since Matt and I had already missed the last train back to Manhattan, a few of us decided to hit up a bar down the street for a drink and then heading to a diner for some food. By the time that was done, we only had an hour to kill, but I was starting to get a migraine, so I ended up curled under a t-shirt rack taking a nap.

Somehow throughout the night, I was convinced to change my flight from Thursday to Friday and had made the call to JetBlue. Since there was nothing available on Friday, I figured what’s one more day and changed it to Saturday. Catching the first train out of Red Bank, Matt and I made it back to Manhattan and were passed out by 8 a.m. only to wake up by one and head back out to Red Bank for the night. Since my friend’s husband had plans, she wanted some of us to hang out with her. So back to New Jersey we went, this time sharing a hotel room with Kate and Josh instead of trying to catch the train back immediately. Though, again, so sleep wasn’t to be had as we ended up awake all night bullshitting and hanging out.

The rest of the trip is just a blur from total exhaustion. I know we left Jersey around 7 a.m. and at some point hit up the Shake Shack and a comic book store. And I surfed the Internet and watched some of the British version of The Office. Yesterday we got up early so I could catch my flight home, which ended up arriving 30 minutes late. Last night I ended up sleeping for 10 hours straight out of utter exhaustion. But even though I’m still a little tired, it was totally worth it and I had an amazing time.