East Coast photo tour

So, most of our time was spent walking, eating and museuming. Here are a few highlights that we were lucky enough to record:

Here we are in the National Gallery, posing for a couple's photo - I think that we managed to get more photos of the two of us together than usual! There is a trend to the National Gallery photos - Calder! They had the most wonderful Calder ROOM! That's right, an entire room dedicated to Calder. It was bliss - and so much fun! I was pretending to be one of his animals - a bull, to be exact.














After DC, we took the train up to NYC. Upon our arrival, a very unfortunate occurrance happened that made me feel like a total urban rookie. I left my laptop on the train, and when we went back for it (5 minutes later), someone had taken off with it. I cursed myself for the rest of the trip. Actually, I'm still kicking myself.

Anyway, we cancelled all of my credit cards, just in case, and I changed my account information for all of my on-line stuff, just in case. It was crazy - I was completely dependent on Michael for all of our expenses. Not that I had planned to go off on a spending spree without him, but the knowledge that I had ZERO purchasing power was strange!

After dealing with that, we wandered around the West Village which seems to have been populated by rather trendy stores like Polo, Juicy, Marc Jacobs over the past 4-5 years. Where did all of the cool, unique stores go? Ugh! We did, however, like this promotion for the New York Sports Club, a gym, obviously. If you can't read it, it says "Politicians, get in shape for your next scandalous photo". Too funny!
















The first night in the city, we actually left the city, sort of, for dinner, meeting up with a friend of Michael's in Brooklyn at this amazing restaurant called "Vinegar Hill House". I want to go back - the food was so terrific! We enjoyed being in Brooklyn and experiencing first-hand some of the hype. I will say that this restaurant does deserve the rave reviews for its fresh, local food. Yum, yum. I'm still thinking about the pork chop and the salted carmel custard that we shared.
The next day, Wednesday, we spent walking all over Tribeca and Soho. I actually ventured out for a sweaty, sticky run along the Hudson River. It was kind of gross but felt good. Once we/I cleaned up, we headed out for coffee at one of my favorite haunts from my Philadelphia days: La Colombe, an incredible coffee place. They still serve their coffee in these wonderful ceramic cups, just as I remebered it, and my only regret was that we shared the croissant. I definitely could have devoured my own!











































Post-coffee and croissant, we wandered around Soho, stopping in the Camper store, the Patagonia store as seen below (my dress was Patagonia too!). The most drool-worthy store of all, however, was the Soho Icebreaker store - or "Lab", as they call it. Talk about coveting absolutely everything they had in that store! No pics and no purchases, but that's the way it goes. I think that the loss of the computer was hanging over me, since I will probably have to replace it, sooner or later.






















After a few more days of walking, eating, visiting with friends, going to musuems, we headed to Rhode Island on Friday for a low-key weekend that consisted of more walking, eating and visiting! The scenery was quite different from that of the big city, however. We both managed to get sunburned, but it was too bad, lucky for us. We/Michael also went fishing early on Sunday morning and managed to catch a blob of seaweed!

All in all, very good times. These photos don't really complete the trip, but they capture snippets of specific moments and memories. For Michael, who lived in NYC for 13 years, the trip definitely took him back, but it is good to know that he doesn't miss the city. And as much as I loved being there, the West Coast feels much more like home to us, and as I said in my last post, boy, were we ever happy to return!