Today was crammed with lots of activities – walking across the Williamsburg Bridge, a brilliant movie, terrible karaoke – and thankfully I was ready for it all after a delicious lunch in Jersey City.

I go to Brooklyn a couple of times a week, but I’ve not ventured in the other direction – heading east across the Hudson River to Jersey City. So this afternoon, Meghan, John and I took the PATH train (another first) to meet Zennie there for lunch. We headed to Thirty Acres, a restaurant near his flat whose chef was in the running for a James Beard Award.

We had quite a wait for a table, but the place was gorgeous – rustic but simple, with a wooden bar and tables. The menu seemed very pared down with just a few choices of sandwiches and entrees, which is always a sign of a restaurant that knows what it’s doing. And when I asked for a latte, I was told they only had coffee – which for some reason made me like the place even more. Oh, and for a short while longer, it’s BYOB.

I opted for the mushroom ‘cheesesteak’ sandwich, which was actually filled with mushrooms and onions slathered with a deliciously sweet butternut squash and cheese puree. Woah, it was tasty. I’m still thinking about it.

With satisfied bellies, we wandered through the rainy streets (sorry, not many photographs) and I noted how it felt a lot like Brooklyn Heights – buildings that looked like offices but with many fewer floors than in Manhattan, wide streets, not many people around. Like Brooklyn, it really felt like a break from the city. And yet it was so close – the PATH took us maybe 15 minutes from 14th Street.

And the lunch prepared us very nicely for the debauchery that followed.