Before we went to Rockefeller Center on Friday, 6 May 2011, we actually made a detour to SoHo. SoHo is a district in Lower Manhattan, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores. SoHo also boasts the greatest collection of cast-iron architecture in the world. Approximately 250 cast iron buildings stand in New York City and the majority of them are in SoHo.
SoHo's name comes from being "SOuth of HOuston Street".
We wandered around SoHo for a couple of hours. We were pleased to be able to pop into shops like purl Soho, Dean & Deluca, Anthropologie, etc. Had a bite at a quaint Japanese specialty grocery store/cafe. We didn't take any photos, unfortunately.
Anyway, that completes our Friday.
On Saturday morning, 7 May 2011, we took the subway to Brooklyn. Here's Ryan, enjoying his morning walk in Brooklyn. Elmo came along too.
Look at this - guerilla knitting! Wonder what the owner of the bicycle thought when he came back to find his bicycle all cozy and warm!
We were actually in an area called "DUMBO" which stands for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass". We were going to Grimaldi's Pizzeria and if you look closely at this map, you can see two white spots - people have pointed to these spots so often that the colour has worn off - these two spots correspond to where you are now (at the sign) and where Grimaldi's Pizzeria is!
There's Grimaldi's - the one with the green top, under the Brooklyn Bridge.
The pizzeria wasn't open yet so we had some time to look around and take some photos. We couldn't wander off though because a queue was forming outside the pizzeria! The restaurant does not accept reservations, does not accept credit cards, does not sell by the slice and does not do deliveries.
Photo of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge in the distance.
This is what we were waiting for! Yums! Pizza from a coal-fired brick oven. Actually, Grimaldi's Pizzeria has several outlets, including one in Manhattan, but the one in Brooklyn is the original and the most famous.
The pizza is served on a stand. Half of our pizza actually fell off! Ryan was helping to ladle the slices off the pan but the pieces were still stuck together with all the cheese on the pizza and, with all that pushing and shoving, the pan slid off the stand with half of the pizza still on it. And you know what - they replaced the whole pizza for us straightaway! We didn't ask them to and they didn't make any comments, they just said, "We'll replace that for you" and they did. They also did not charge us for the second pizza (we made up for the price of the pizza in our tip, which they were surprised to see). Such great people.
We didn't do much else in Brooklyn, we wanted to get back to Manhattan to check out of the hotel and head over to the airport, so it was back to the subway after our pizza.
1 comments:
Miss my grimaldi's!!!!!
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