Lazy New York Saturday

Yesterday we had a great day of mostly drinking coffee and sitting in parks people watching – this is one of the busiest cities in the world yet we seem to find plenty of time to relax, sitting on park benches and taking an hour to travel from one coffee spot to another. I know we’re essentially on vacation for a few days, but we did a fair amount of sitting on park benches when we lived here as well.

First stop after brunch with Cousin Grant in Tribeca was Saturdays Surf – great to see the place hadn’t changed much although the plants out the back had grown heaps. We drank our coffee and watched a hairy caterpillar scurry around for a while (video here!).

Spent a couple of hours eating a sandwich and watching people wander along The Mall in Central Park. We still haven’t seen The Mall in fall colors but I took another photo from the same spot as ones last year to add to the collection – you can see them all here tagged The Mall.

Then it was back to Shake Shack in Madison Square Park for burgers, fries and a shake. Man the burgers tasted better than I remember. I was so great being back there sitting under the lights with bits of acorn falling on your head from squirrels in the trees above snacking.

We visited Eataly afterwards – it’s Mario Batali’s Italian indoor market that was being built when we lived here last year. The place is huge and has every Italian food and ingredient you can think of – a pasta section, cheese section, gelato section … wines, fish, fresh pasta, coffee, chocolates, sweets, books, desserts, meats, pizza and lots of restaurants or standing bar places where you can get food to eat.

There’s a ‘vegetable butcher’ too – after you’ve selected your vegetables you just give them to him and he’ll wash and chop or prepare them any style you want – 3 pounds of carrots julienned please … we got a small tub of gelato and sat in the window looking out at the Flat Iron building for a while.