Day #6- Monday

I am finally about to get caught up on all my blog posts :-)

Holly and Jon left on Monday afternoon. But before they left, we went to Lombardi's to eat what we think is the BEST pizza in NYC! Check out this pie:

We had the Margarita Pizza and it was completely delicious! They bake their pies in a coal fired oven, so the dough is thin yet chewy. The tomato sauce is salty and tomatoey, the cheese is melted and gooey. Mmm! It is incredible. We come to Lombardi's every time we're in NYC, it just isn't the same trip without a visit here.

After Lombardi's, Holly wanted to go to Chinatown, so we walked down the street a couple blocks to view all the craziness that goes on in these streets. As it was Monday and not the weekend, the crowds weren't too bad. Usually there are mobs of tourists, and Chinese people every 10 feet walking past you saying under their breath, "handbags, watches, Gucchi, Channel". We only had 1 person whisper it to us while we were there, but at that point Holly had already bought a purse in a legit store. We've followed these crazy knock off purse people many times, and they always take you to a back alley, to a tiny, suspicious looking apartment, where you are quickly whisked inside to view all the "real" merchandise. If you want a good knock-off designer bag, this is the only way to do it. All the legit stores in Chinatown have watered down versions of knock-offs. But, the one Holly got was cute, I don't think it was supposed to be a knock off of anything, it was just a cute purse.

Random thought: why is the word "cute" always used to describe articles of clothing/purses/shoes? Have you ever not used the word cute when observing clothes/purses/shoes that you like? It's impossible! Cute is the only word that totally sums it up.

Moving on....

Here is a picture from our Chinatown excursion:

At this point, it was already 1:30, and their car service was coming at 3:00 to pick them up from our apartment. Since we couldn't think of what else to do, we got in a cab and went back to the apartment to try to decide. Scott looked through one of our many "things do do in NYC" tour books, and read about this little pub called the "White Horse Tavern". It is one of the oldest pubs in NYC, established in 1742, so we walked the few blocks to go check it out. It was a beautiful day, 84 degrees and sunny, so we sat at a table outside and ordered some drinks, and just watched all passers by. NYC is a great place to people watch- there are people from all walks of life here. It is incredibly diverse, so people watching is never boring. You never know who (or what, in some cases) will walk by you. We enjoyed this last hour reminiscing about our trip, and planning out when the next one will be. At 2:50, we walked back to the apartment and said our good-byes. We had a totally fun, fabulous, and FOOD FILLED trip with Holly and Jon, and miss them already!

After they left, Scott and I went inside and worked for a couple of hours. Once we had caught up on some emails and calls that needed to be made, we decided that we would be hungry in an hour or so, and picked a Mexican place that we had read about in one of our books. The writer of this restaurant review said that Noche Mexicana had the best tacos in town, and they only cost $2.00! So we decided that we needed to check it out. Another reason for selecting this place was that it is in the Upper West Side, and as we are in the West Village, it would be a nice long walk for us, which we wanted as we have been eating non-stop for days. We put on our good comfy walking shoes, and set out for our long trip uptown. It took us an hour and a half of brisk walking to walk up to our destination at 102nd street. We mapped out our path, and discovered we'd walked 100 blocks total to get to Noche Mexicana. Needless to say, by the time we got there we were hungry! Here is what we got:

Scott had the spicy chicken burrito. Notice the parmasean cheese sprinkled on top- I'd never seen that in a Mexican dish before! It was actually extremely delicious, so delicious in fact that I will from now on add that to my homemade tacos!

I had the chalupas, which were corn tortillas layered with refried beans, lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, parmasean cheese, and sour cream. 3 came to an order, so I chose 3 different meats, chicken, steak, and beef. However they actually only gave me a chicken and 2 with steak, but I ate it anyway because I was starving, even though beef is my favorite so I did miss not getting it!

We didn't get the $2 tacos, but our meals were only around $10 each, so it was still a good, inexpensive choice. After this, we were totally stuffed, so decided that we definitely needed to walk all the way back home. We walked to 65th st, and went into Bed, Bath, and Beyond because I wanted to buy a Yoga mat. (I plan on doing my Jillian Michaels workout video, 30 Day Shred, while I'm here, and have done it only once as the floor in our apartment is so hard I can't stand to do anything because it hurts so much. Now that I have my soft mat to lie on, I can do crunches and push ups much more effectively.) After shopping for a little bit, it was dark outside, and we still had about 50 more blocks to get back home, so we took the subway home instead.

It felt so good to have gotten some exercise in, we have vowed that we are going to walk every where we go from now on, even if it means leaving an hour early to give us time to walk there. Since we are eating our way through NYC, walking is essential if we want to be able to still fit into our clothes we brought! Having made our vow of constant exercise from now on, we decided to reward our healthy choice with some ice cream from our neighboring ice cream cart at Cafe Cluny. We shared a scoop of chocolate cappuccino and ate it in our apartment. Another full day in NYC!