Day #17-Friday

Friday morning, we went to get a snack at the little coffee shop across the street. We then took the subway down to the Financial District. Scott wanted to show Amy Wall Street and the World Trade Center site.

NY Stock Exchange

Trump Building

This whole financial area was very heavily guarded

Sad to see how terrorists have changed the NYC way of life.

Next, we walked over to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Once we got to Brooklyn, we wanted to eat at Grimaldi's, which has been voted the best pizza place in NY. So of course we had to see if it was true or not! After getting there, we were shocked to see the line to get in this place:

A line? For a pizza place? Well, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to get here, so we decided to go ahead and wait in the line. It couldn't take that long, right?

An hour later, we FINALLY got seated. By this point we were totally starving. So starving that we started eating our pizza, and then remembered that we didn't take any pictures of it. Here is our half eaten margarita pizza:

Out of the 3 traditional NYC pizza places we've eaten, we ranked this one #3. To us, Patsy's is #1, then Lombardi's at #2. We were glad to have gotten to try it, but it was definitely not worth the hour long wait. The highlight of this place was while standing in line for the bathroom- the line wrapped around next to the kitchen, so we were able to see the pizza's being made:

After pizza, we went back to the apartment to get changed for the night out.

Scott had read about this rooftop cocktail lounge with great views of the city. It was on top of the Strand Hotel. We went there and sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful views of the Empire State Building and all the city lights:

Our next stop was dinner. We jumped in a cab to one of Bobby Flay's restaurants, Bar Americain. We were excited to eat here as his other restaurants we've been to (Mesa Grill, and Bolo) were so delicious. As we looked over the menu, Amy asked the waiter about one of the dishes. It was Skate, which we learned was the tail of a Sting Ray. Amy asked if it was good, and the waiter told her that all the dishes are good as they are all tested out on TV. Then he said, "this is a Bobby Flay restaurant."

Duh.

Why do you think we're here, dummy! After our laugh (when he left, of course) we couldn't wait to try our selections. We started with an appetizer of fried green tomatoes:

These were even better than they look! So amazing!

Scott got the smoked chicken:

It definitely had a very distinct smokey flavor. Very moist and delicious!

I got the lamb chops:

Oh my goodness, these were absolutely phenomenal!

Amy got the Skate dish:

She wasn't thrilled with it. She didn't like the texture, and the taste was kind of bland.

This totally made up for it though- cauliflower and goat cheese gratin. This was unbelievably good! That Bobby Flay knows a thing or two about food! Mmmmm!!!!!!!!!

After dinner, we met a friend of Amy's who lives here in the city. His name is Ernest, and he was super nice! We all went to another rooftop lounge called Plunge at the Hotel Gansevort. We had a great time the rest of the evening, enjoying good music and a beautiful view of NYC.