We woke up & played some more; Kyla made herself right at home, of course :) She loved the view out of their window!
Then we headed out, this was when it was still crazy warm, btw.
But not before snapping a few pictures! Sara gave Kyla her old camera for Christmas, and she did well taking photos! She did in spurts kind of, she didn't wear it around her neck 24/7, but she took about 120 photos that we had printed this morning, and a lot of them are really good!! I love seeing her point of view in all of them, even the ones that are a bit 'strange' like the grate on the sidwalk (it was neat looking), or the ceiling fans at Chelsea Market (which were also neat!) She's started gluing them into a scrapbook & adding a bit of writing too, she did 6 or 7 pages today but hardly made a dent in her photos. I told it could count as her writing for schooltime until she gets finished, grammar & spelling can wait for now. (plus, she's waaaaay ahead, halfway through 3rd grade work now anyway)
So remember, this is our first full day in the city, but Kyla already had the subway system down pat. She always wanted to know what train & direction (uptown or downtown) we were taking, and was good to help me watch the signs also to make sure we were going the right way. Extra bonus was that she could spot what letter was on the train as it was approaching before I could :) This cracked.me.up. They made an announcement that our train was arriving in the station, so she yelled at me and took off at a run with everyone else to make it, ha! We did make it, btw :)
love this one of my sweet girl!
Our quick stop in Greenwich Village at McDonalds (the only time I'm pretty certain that we even walked in an eating place that we have in Arkansas) to get a coffee & use their free wifi for a minute :) I hadn't looked at the map super, super well before we left, thinking I'd do it on the train, but being rush hour (as Kyla was telling Nathan today & I overheard, the trains are REALLY full and you can't even sit down in the morning, and during the day they're okay, but at night they get REALLY full again.) I didn't have room to reach into my pocket & get the little map out even, so we guessed at getting off, and regrouped at McDonalds before changing trains. And took a few pictures, of course. And, actually helped another couple visiting from Mississippi that asked me. I guess I look approachable with Kyla with me maybe or something, but I had several people ask ME for help, which was kind of weird....I actually could help a few, but the poor couple that kept talking and talking to me in French I'm afraid I was no help at all to, ha! I actually knew what they were asking & how to tell them to get there, but not in French.
Our destination was Chelsea Market. We don't have TV, and their online episode availability is sporadic and random at best, but I love Food Network when I can get it! Their studios and everything are on the 2nd floor, and when we were in college house-sitting one summer we used to watch Emeril Live every single night, and he talked all the time about going downstairs to the market to buy whatever.....so, nerdy I guess, but I had to go! Plus, they have all kinds of great places to eat, and it's in a super cool really old building. Unfortunately, there aren't any options for visiting anything Food Network related, no offices, tours, anything at all, so we just got a picture of the sign downstairs.
This should have been before that one, cool neighborhood. And cool kid :)
Another one I love!
The market is in an old Nabisco 'biscuit' (aka cookie) factory, and the way they had restored it was just too cool. They had several neat displays, like these tintype photos, and old packaging & stuff. It's probably my Daddy being a grocery man all my life, but I love stuff like that too. The packaging, seeing inside the factory, love it all. Kyla enjoyed the little exhibit vignette things too, and took several pictures of them too :) I need to do a separate post when I get done with my photos (if I ever do, ha!) of hers too maybe.....
Of course we had to eat, and eat we did! We bought little things at several of the shops for our brunch, if you can call it that, it was a pretty eclectic meal! These French macaroons were amazing, but super, super rich. You know Kyla has a big sweet tooth, and she couldn't even finish the little cookie, she had me wrap it up & finished it later, even with me taking a few bites. It was amazing! The lady in the bakery was super sweet to Kyla too.
Kyla taking a picture of the neat ceiling fans....they had used old postage box plates to line the elevator wall....lots of exposed brick, tons of reclaimed stuff, just super cool stuff to look at everywhere.
Including these big softly rounded stone benches and seats everywhere. This was Amy's Bakery I'm pretty sure, but we sat & watched them make bread for a while. They were making loaves, then slitting the tops with razors, on tables the size of those big banquet tables like churches & stuff have, like twin bed sized. We couldn't believe it when they finished & slid the whole table into the oven! It had several 'decks' too, you can see in the bottom right picture the guy is using a paddle (or a peel, isn't that what they're called, maybe, a pizza peel?) to get a bunch of loaves out. It looked & smelled amazing!
We stopped at the butcher (after the baker :) to see what 'real' meat looks like, ha! Kyla actually asked the butcher a few questions, and he was very kind to answer (I'm telling you, people seriously were just outrageously nice everywhere) all of them. Then we went to the 'Dairy' where they have their own cows out of town I guess (in the Hudson Valley) and sell pretty literally only dairy products. Like glass bottles, super 'natural', only dairy products. We shared a yogurt smoothie thing there, and talked for half an hour, literally, with the nice guy working there (we were seated at a bar thing, and it was him & a girl working that ran the cash register mostly while he talked to us, ha! They weren't busy at all either, we must have gone at the perfect time of year, as nothing was!) He had recently ridden the Amtrak from LA, 64 hours, and was telling us about that, about New York in general, etc. Have I mentioned yet how nice people everywhere where?!?
Cool waterfall.....
Love the left one too. This is the "I know she's mine and I'm biased but isn't she adorable" line :)
There were all kind of cool stone things everywhere.....
This was a big kitchen supply type place that just kept going and going and going. The store front wasn't any bigger than any of the other places, but once you got inside it was just a maze of those stainless steel shelves with all kinds of everything you can imagine. And a knife sharpener & all kinds of knives, rows and rows of every kind of white dishes in every shape & size you can imagine, 20 kinds of whisks, etc. Neat place. Kyla bought 4 teeny tiny little white ceramic Asian style soup spoons (the deep 'boat' style like you sip egg drop soup out of) and a teeny tiny little pitcher for her dolls for a total of under $5 of her money.
More neat sights...I don't think I've ever seen such dense lights in my whole life, they were on there thick! See the big blue "A" on the paper taped in the window of the bakery? Every restaurant/cafe/diner/whatever has one of these sanitary grades. I saw mostly A's, a few B's a couple of C's (all pretty deep in Chinatown, ha!), and a few "grade pending's"
There was an Anthropologie store there too, so we had go to in this one. And, it was amazing. Even Kyla said that "Mom, this all looks like stuff you would just love! I want to buy you something." And carefully went around checking the prices on the bowls & plates in my favorite colors (blues & turquoises) until she found one that was the right price ($2.50, and it is cute!) and bought it for me. What.a.sweetheart! I could have done some serious damage in here. Or, better yet, just moved right in, ha!
Anthropologie.....you know how Kyla is about crafts & repurposing things, the owls were pieces of tree trunks & rock and stuff, with soda cans for their eyes, etc.
The sale stuff was downstairs, and they actually had several super cute coats on super sale, like originally $200-300 on sale for $48-$60. I had brought one with me, but it was waaay too bulky and stiff to be wearing around all the time and carrying my bag over it, and waay too warm for wearing inside at all, which I knew I was going to need to do at the museums and stuff, so I tried a few on. I loved the mustard colored one, but didn't think I could wear it; both the style & color were a big stretch for me, and, it did look pretty bad. Horrible in fact. I can't remember how Kyla put it, she's so diplomatic always, but it was bad. Oh well.....I did get a cute one though that I do love, $48 regularly $248, and it was perfect. I'm wearing it in pretty much every single picture from this point on now, ha! It's so funny to me how well Kyla knows my tastes and what I can/will wear and not, she's a great little person to shop with!
A lot of the subway stations had neat tile mosaics, lots of them very intricate in the shading & stuff. This was one of the older subways, oranges & yellows, the newer ones looked a bit more modern with grays & blues & stuff. And there really are rats that run the tracks. Huge rats, bigger than I've ever seen in my life and wondered if they really existed that huge rats. I even saw 2 up on the platform one time, crazy! We did love the subway though, it was pretty quick, easy, and efficient.
This was my favorite post I think. SO inspiring!!!!!!!!
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