NYC IV

Anyone still out there? Have my long posts run you all away? If you are still reading, here is the forth day of our vacation! We decided to sleep in this morning, and after breakfast headed to the subway to go to the Soho area. I really enjoyed this area and all the fun shops. It was a really nice morning to just take a stroll through the streets and look in all the little shops. From there we headed into China Town. One word - CRAZY!! I knew this was the place for some really good "fake" items (aka: purses, jewelery, sunglasses, etc.), but I had no idea how absolutely crazy it would be and how many other tourist would be there trying to find the same "bargins" as me. I won't go into the story, but I can shamfully say that I feel into the "trap"!!! All I will say is it might have been the scariest experice of the trip, if not my life, and included us stuffed into a big white, 250 degree van full of knock-off purses!!! There, I said it! I am not proud of it, nor very smart for falling into the "trap"!

Anyways, after looking around China Town for a bit, we headed to Little Italy! If you know Sam at all, you know that he was in heaven! He has been wanting to go to Mulberry Street for a long time! I really liked how the street was blocked off to cars and how all the resturants had outdoor seating like Italy. We took our time here and looked in EVERY resturant to see how old it was, and then tried to imagine it many years ago when the maffia was there! We even brought home some homemade sauce from Uncle Vincent's resturant. This resturant has been in their original building and location for >100 years! I took Sam's picture with cousin Vincent, who now owns the restaurant. This will probably be the only picture he cares to frame of the trip!! We weren't able to eat there though because we had our hearts set on Lombardi's Pizza. This is the original brick oven pizza joint in the US; it was DELICIOUS and all that we had hoped for. Sam insists that it is the best he has ever had! This is a must for anyone traveling to NYC soon.

After a HUGE, and very tasteful meal we headed off to find more food at our first of three bakeries that I had picked out to go to. I had a HUGE list of bakeries that I wanted to visit, but since we were walking almost everywhere and did not have a month in the city to get to all these places, I narrowed it down to three that were convenient to where we would be going. It was called Sugar Sweet Sunshine bakery. I got a Sassy red velvet cupcake with dark chocolate icing and Sam I believe got what was called a "Bob" cupcake (a yellow cake cupcake w/ chocolate almond buttercream). Now we were officially stuffed!!!

Don't worry though b/c we did plenty of walking heading back over to Battery Park so that we could catch the Staten Island Ferry. After much debate we decided to do this "free" ferry ride rather than pay for the tours that take you to Liberty and Ellis Island. We decided we were too worn out, and took the easy way out! The ferry was huge and was a very relaxing ride. We got to see the Statue of Liberty up close and the view of the city was great!

Our day was about over and our last night was approaching. We had dinner at Tavern on the Green and then just strolled around Central Park and Times Square. We finished off the night by finally getting some soft served ice cream from the ice cream truck that was always parked right outside of our hotel lobby and then headed in for a good nights rest. The last day was quickly approaching! :(

Vincent's in Little Italy

Sam with Cousin VincentThe original brick oven at Lombardi's
Sam at the entrance of Little Italy
On Staten Island w/ NYC in the background
The view of the Statue of Liberty from the ferry
All dressed up for dinner at the Tavern on the Green