Day Two - On a Mission

Saturday morning, we ended up sleeping late (until 8 am). After leisurely getting dressed, we went out for coffee and bagels. I love New York Bagels. And Bergen Bagels have to be the second best bagels in the world. (Cincinnati's Bagel King is my all-time favorites.) The only complaint I have is that Bergen Bagels is a tiny little shop with virtually no seating. We ended up taking the bagels back to the apartment to eat.

We finally got going for real around 2 pm. Since mom and I wanted to get Cari a sewing machine, we headed out to the Garment District. Our first stop was Sew Easy. This place was even more hidden than Seaport Yarns! I don't know how anybody finds anything here in the city. But Cari knew what she was doing, and led us right to it even though it was her first visit there, too. Unfortunately, they didn't have what we were looking for. So we wandered around, just looking. We found Parsons, which was pretty neat for a couple of Project Runway fans.

We did go into Macy's flagship store. It was overwhelming. It was nine stories, and we looked at them all. My favorite thing was the wooden escalators. We all managed to walk out with a few purchases.

Although it's not her favorite place, Cari also took us up to Times Square. We wanted to be able to say we saw it. It was very crowded, very touristy, and after a quick picture we were ready to go somewhere else.

Next we went to Union Square. The farmer's market was still going on, even though it was early evening, so we wandered a little bit. By chance mom noticed one of the stands was marked "Van Houton Farms." Gramma and Grampa had been friends with Van Houtons, so mom stopped to ask if this was the same family. Amazingly, it was! We talked with the brother of Gramma's friend. I remember Gramma taking us kids to the farm to camp. This is the same farm that the famous Bear Chase occurred.

From Union Square, we went up a couple of blocks to the Strand. This is a huge used book store that boasts 18 miles of books. It also happens to be where my daughter works. We had to stop and browse, and walked out with a few more purchases.

While we were in the area, we also stopped in at Trader Johns for some groceries. I knew that grocery stores in New York would deliver your purchases (which beats carrying them on the subway, the way we did). But I hadn't realized how late the stores were open, and that deliveries could be made right up until midnight. Which would have been very fortunate, since we didn't make it back to the apartment until almost 11 pm.

We had one other adventure on Saturday. Mom, Cari and I found our very first letterbox! It was so cool, finding the treasure box and using the stamp inside to mark our logbooks. I don't want to give any of it away, so I won't say anymore about it.