I have always wanted to go to Jerusalem for Good Friday. For all my religious struggles that strikes me as a pilgrimage worth making. Or to Munich for Oktoberfest–a tribute to both my German heritage and fondness for beer.

Mystic, Connecticut, if we’re going to be frank, was low on my Pilgrimage List. But to Mystic I did go this past weekend. More specifically, to Mystic Pizza I did go. And not out of an unfathomable love for Julia Roberts. And not even out of an unfathomable love for my sorority who claims several ties to the movie that bears the same name and is the source of all my fondest college memories. But out of love for a friend, one of those sorority sisters: We are two girls from the middle of America who know what it is like to be a long way from home, to miss out on the little things, to feel pain when our loved ones hurt and we cannot be there. When that friend who used to hold the bathroom door for you in frat houses asks you to drive six hours up the coast for lunch, you ask when she wants to leave.

And when the pizza tastes better than you expected, you know it’s as much because of how you got there as it is how they made it.