Sunday in the Park

Sunday morning in NYC, we had brunch at EuroPan and then walked to church on the 3rd floor at the ManhattanTemple. Fast and testimony meeting was great. The youth in the Manhattan ward are pretty amazing and their testimonies were moving. 

It felt a little strange to walk out of church into Columbus avenue and buy a pretzel from a street vendor. 

We walked over to Central Park and started our "Sunday in the park" at the sheep meadow. 

Boats on "the lake".

People watching at it's best in Central Park. 

We walked past the John Lennon  Imagine Memorial, Strawberry Fields, Marionette Theatre, and Shakespeare's Garden. 

Belvediere Castle 

Turtle Pond

It started to get hot and we'd walked around so much and over so many hills we were tired. We exited the park through the miners gate and there was the Met with an hour and a half left before the closed, so we powered on. 

Dan Grahame rooftop garden commission exhibit. 

This was a glass wall with ivy growing behind it that reflected the ny skyline onto the glass. So. Cool. 

There was a 365* view that did not disappoint. Thankful again for perfect weather! 

Inside, the art was great! 

For dinner, we set out on a quest for cheap and delicious Chinese takeout, but after two attempts where we ended up at fancy schmancy Chinese restaurants that were completely empty. Empty is not a good sign in the city. We gave up and went to Little Italy in search of pasta. 

Oh. We found the pasta motherland. 

Eataly came highly recommended from several foodie friends. We found it to be a bit of a tourist trap and less authentic than we hoped, but good nonetheless. Eataly is an indoor Italian marketplace and every corner of the market has something different for sale: a fish and butcher/deli, a bakery, a pizza place, a dry goods market, produce market, wine and spirits, a cheese bar, a fresh pasta bar, and a Nutella shrine room where you could buy crepes. It was a really fun place to walk around. 

We are at the pizza and pasta restaurant and had terrible service and over priced but decent food. We decided Eataly was like the oriental trading company catalog knock off of little Italy (which was right down the block and much lore what you'd expect. But even though dinner was kind of a bust, the view from our table upstairs that overlooked the marketplace was really good and we enjoyed the energy of watching everyone else shop and eat and eat and shop. Good fun. 

NYC Pizza quest day 3 gave us a fire grilled margarita pizza (missing basil, ironically) with artichoke hearts. We also shared some penne pasta that was very al dente and much like something you'd eat at a pasta buffet for starving college students. Nothing to write home about. It was fun to watch our pizza being made though. 

Dessert was another adventure to find the highly acclaimed Donut Plant. Cute place, probably better at breakfast time when the selection is better though. The walls were decorated with donut pillows and the benches were donut mosaics. My kind of decor ;). While we ate, the employee came out from behind the counter to make out with her girlfriend, and the big guy sitting next to us fell asleep sitting straight up.  We were approached by a drunk transvestite asking for money and a homeless person slurring together the words to ask where the hospital was, but only as a trap to get everyone on the street to stop and talk to him, while we waited for busses.  Walking around in Chelsea at night was a little "iffy", but crowded enough that we still always felt safe. We were still grateful to be able to hop on and off of bus routes easily, instead of braving the subway, which surely would've had even more questionable characters on board.  One woman asked us for money and then kept shouting congratulations to us on "our" baby, "you gonna need all yo dollars and all yo cents to feed that baby you growing! There might be two babies in there, you never know the way you carrying it!" as we walked away.  We were pretty relieved to reach our hotel room that night.