Day #25- Saturday

Saturday morning we got up and had brunch at our next door restaurant, Cafe Cluny. As always, it was F-A-B-A-L-O-U-S! Lindsay got the brioche french toast... YUM!

Megan got the sandwich, which had a fried egg, avocado, bacon, and tomato:

Scott got corned beef hash with poached eggs:

And I got the eggs florentine:

This was a highly satisfying brunch. And also a highly humorous one. First of all, our waiter was from England, and could not understand a word I was saying, him with his highly proper British accent, and me with my southern hick accent. And, I am getting sick and have a sore throat/raspy voice, so that added to the situation. When he came by to take our order, he asked if we were ready, and I said "I can't decide!" He thought I said "I want a salad". So he said, "ok, the salad", and then to clarify, said again "you'll have the salad?" Then I said "no, I can't decide" and then he said "no, you hate salad?" and then I said "No, I can't decide- I can't decide on what to order!"

He still looked confused, so Lindsay, in her non-KY accent, had to translate and tell him that I couldn't decide on what to order yet, and to come back in a few minutes. The whole thing was pretty funny actually. Then, when we finally ordered and got our food, all us girls whipped out our iphones and started taking pictures of all our food, and passing our phones around so we could get pictures of everyone else's food. Between the communication difficulties and the frenzied photo session over our food, the waiter probably all thought we were crazy!

And he would be right in assuming that :-)

After brunch, Lindsay had to leave, so we walked her to the MegaBus stop. We had so much fun

with her and were sad to see her go. But, she had to get home to her babies, so we said our goodbyes and left.

The 3 of us walked over to Herald Square, which is where the world's largest Macy's is located. It's on 34th street (yes, thus the movie Miracle on 34th Street) and takes up an entire city block. It is also the world's largest department store- so you can just imagine how massive this place is. We just walked past it as it would surely have taken the entire rest of the day to browse through here.

As we walked along, Scott (aka Mr. Tour Guide) pointed out all the points of interest/famous landmarks to Megan.

In front of the Waldorf Astoria

In front of Rockefeller Center

In front of Central Park

We stopped at Patsy's for lunch

It was saucy and delicious! This is by far my #1 favorite NYC pizza place. Megan loved it too!

We decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET). Scott split up from us because he wanted to look at paintings, and Megan and I wanted to look at ancient Egyptian and Roman artifacts. I think I've finally figured out why I don't love museums- because we always look at paintings. They are ok, but I get bored with them. I really like looking at ancient artifacts, figurines, dishes.. all the little tools and devices that were made by hand thousands of years ago. That is really interesting to me!

For example, look at this:

These are dice, with a little barrel to roll them with. Does this not look just like our dice today? This is an ancient Yahtzee game, created B.C.! Isn't that neat?

Here are some other shots of things we thought were interesting:

Ornate and carefully created vases and bowls

Cute little figurines. So precise! To think, these were carved out of stone, by hand!

These little figurine heads- so detailed!

Ancient Egyptian jewelry- so neat! I always love looking at joo-rey!

How cute and ornate is this little knife and spoon!?!

Megan in front of a medieval troop of knights and horses

After a long day of walking around we went back to the apartment, exhausted. But, there is never any downtime in NYC, so we got ready for dinner. We had reservations for Morimoto, which is a fabulous restaurant owned by one of my favorite Iron Chefs. Scott and I have been here a few years ago, so we knew this place had good food and a really cool atmosphere. We had an amazing dinner and loved the experience.

I have to add this in- check out the bathrooms at Morimoto:

Isn't that too cool? It looks like a long, flowered hallway behind the toilet. Pretty neat optical illusion! And, the seats are heated. Can't beat that!

After our delicious dinner, we walked back home and went to bed. Another exhausting yet fulfilling day in NYC!

Day #24- Friday

Friday morning was great- my sister Megan and her sister in law Lindsay came to stay with us for the weekend, so I went to meet them at the Mega Bus stop at 10:15. I was so excited to see them, and looking forward to our fun weekend ahead!

Megan and Lindsay

Me and Megan in front of the Flat Iron Building

We started off by going to Shake Shack. After all this blogging and raving on and on about how delicious the burgers are here, we had to take them here to try it out for themselves. As expected, the burgers did not disappoint!

Lindsay enjoying her burger!

After our fabulous lunch, we decided to take the Staten Island Ferry to look at the Statue of Liberty. You can ride the ferry to Staten Island and then back again, free! The views were great:

After the ferry, we went to the Financial District to walk around Wall Street.

Here is the giant Wall Street Bull

This was a sphere in the plaza of the World Trade Center Towers. It is put here as memorial.

After walking around for a while, Megan and Lindsay wanted to check out Century 21. After a bit of shopping, we went back to our end of town so the girls could check out the Chelsea Market.

Chelsea Market Hot Chocolate Bar

Bakery in the Market... how cute are these cupcakes!

After the Market, we walked back home to get ready for dinner. We had reservations at a place called L'Artusi. It was an Italian restaurant, and it was incredible! The food and the service were absolutely amazing. This was a small plates place, so we had fun ordering a bunch of small plates and sharing them. Here is what we got:

This was a crudo of escolar (raw fish) with a mixture of avocados, basil, and chiles. It was divine!

This was a fried egg on top of roasted mushrooms and ricotta salata. This was delish as well!

Megan and Lindsay each got this Chickories dish, which was a salad with parmasean, lemon, and anchovy dressing. Yum!

Megan got the gnocchi with tomato and basil. It was so good- you can't go wrong with a gnocchi dish!

Scott ordered the sweetbreads, which came with a raspberry compote. For those of you who haven't had sweetbreads, they are actually pretty good. The name is deceiving though- sweetbreads are actually fried glands of a veal calf. I know, more weird food for Scott. But they really are good- everyone tried them and seemed to like them ok.

We all also shared this heirloom tomato salad with watermelon. Mmmmm! This unusual pairing is totally fabulous! The tomatoes and the watermelon really compliment each other.

Lindsay had the Branzino with roasted lemon, olives and honey. It was light, buttery and delicious!

I got the ricotta ravioli, with housemade ricotta, black pepper, and pecorino. Oh my, this was sooooooooo good! I loved it!

Our waiter turned out to be from Floyd Knobs, Indiana, of all places! So we made friends with him as we were from Louisville. He brought us this delicious zucchini with garlic, basil, and chilies.... for free! What a great server! And, he brought us all a free half glass of wine to start out meal off! We loved him! We asked him to surprise us with whatever dessert he liked the best, and he brought out this panna cotta with vanilla bean.. it was fab!

After a wonderfully satisfying dinner, we went to Broadway to see Mary Poppins. We, as in us girls. Scott went to see Chicago, as he had no desire to see Mary Poppins.

The show was really cute, and pretty similar to the movie. Neither Megan nor Lindsay had seen a Broadway show before in NYC, so they both really liked it.

Afterwards, we walked around Times Square to admire all the lights...

Afterwards, we stopped in this little jazz bar to hear some live jazz music. The band was really, really good! We stayed for one set, then left for home. We had a great night out with the girls, and were so glad they could come to visit us in our "NYC home" :-)

Day #23- Thursday

Thursday we got up early and went to the Bronx to the New York Botanical Garden. They have a huge conservatory there that I wanted to go to. As it was all the way up in the Bronx, it took us about an hour via subway to get there. Then we had to walk about 10 blocks from the subway station to the garden. When we finally got there, I was so excited to see the Conservatory. We had gone to the Washington DC National Conservatory in April, and I absolutely LOVED that, so I had high hopes for this one.

When we walked up to the steps of the Conservatory, I noticed tons of potted plants all around, so many that the doors to the entrance were covered up. Then I saw a sign that said "Closed for Renovations until Nov 19th."

POO! What a let down! All that way up there for nothing!

But as luck would have it, there was a cooking demonstration that was just getting ready to start. So we got a front row seat, and watched the executive chef from the Braeburn restaurant show us how to make an heirloom tomato salad.

I learned some neat tricks. For example, he taught us how to make tomato water.

He said to slice up some heirloom tomatoes. Then put them in a food processor, add a couple tablespoons of water, and blend them just enough so that they are still chunky. then you take this mixture and put it in a cheesecloth and strain it over a bowl for a whole day. Then on the next day, take all the water that has strained out into the bowl and put it in a canister with a lid. He said that this can be frozen, so if you want to make something later in the year that calls for tomatoes, you can use some of this tomato water, and it will have that fresh summer heirloom tomato taste. Isn't that awesome? Winter tomatoes at the grocery are a joke. I'm not even sure you can call them tomatoes, they are so mealy and flavorless. So I am definitely going to do this when I get home! I can't wait to add tomato water to my pasta dishes and chili this fall and winter! Mmm!

After the awesome demonstration, we walked around the Botanical Gardens. Here is the closed Conservatory:

Next to this were several gardens. One was Martha Stewart's herb garden, which was very cool!

We also saw Michael Psilakis (another famous Chef) herb garden:

We read on this sign that he owns a Greek restaurant in Manhattan called Kefi. So we called Kefi right then and made reservations for that night.

Here is one of our favorites, Mario Batali. His herb garden was very cool also. We read about how to make a raised bed garden... I think we will attempt to do this at home next year.

Here are some more photos of our day at the Botanical Garden:

After a couple hours there, we got back on the subway for our hour long commute back to the city. We went straight to our dinner at Kefi. It was phenomenal!We started off with an appetizer of warm pita bread with a spread of olives, feta, tomatoes, anchovies, capers, and peppers.

The feta and olive mixture was warm as well as the pita bread. This would have been amazing, had they not thrown in a handful of tiny chopped red onions. YUCK! I hate when restaurants do that. If onions are in the mixture, then the menu needs to say that. Since the onions were chopped so finely, it was too hard to pick them all out, so I only ate a teeny bit of this. Stupid onions, ruining everything! Yuck yuck yuck.

Scott's entree was very good. He got the sheep's milk dumplings with tomato, pine nuts, and spicy lamb sausage:

The dumplings were warm, chewy and cheesy (very similar to gnocchi), the sauce was rich and tomatoey, and the lamb had just the right amount of spiciness... delicious!

I had the Branzino, which is Mediterranean Sea Bass:

This was some of the most delicious, buttery, flavorful fish I have ever eaten. It was lightly grilled, and served with small potatoes, olives, and tomatoes.

Overall, I'd give this restaurant a 9/10 (the only reason it wasn't a 10/10 is because of the onions in the pita dish). It was absolutely fantastic. Greek food is our favorite, so this restaurant was one of the best we'd been to so far in our trip. Good job, Michael Psilakis!

After dinner, we had tickets to see South Pacific.

The show was ok. I had really high expectations though as this show has been sold out every single night for the past 3 times we've been to NYC. So I thought that it would be absolutely unbelievable. But, it was ok. I'd give it a 6/10. In hindsight, I wish we'd seen Wicked or Phantom again. We've seen those and they were both wonderful. Oh well! All in all, we had a fabulous day!