Saturday in the City

Hi All -

Yesterday for breakfast I had half a bagel, grapes and a tangerine. There were also muffins out for breakfast, but I decided to go with the fruit and bagel. Sigh. Lara had the brilliant idea of adding peanut butter to her half of the bagel we split, but it was early, and I was not thinking - but I definitely could have used the peanut butter for an extra bit of protein!

Ben, Lara and I had a great time in the city yesterday! We did not get into the city until about 2:30 or 3pm - we did have a great, leisurely morning and it was well worth it. We started the afternoon at the Morgan Library, which I had always wanted to go to. I was so excited because the Morgan had an exhibition entitled Drawing Babar. I loved reading the Babar stories when I was growing up. This exhibit was so perfect - I enjoyed seeing the creative process that Jean de Brunhoff and later his son, Laurent used in creating the stories that I appreciated so much.

After leaving the land of Babar, we explored a smaller exhibit on John Milton's Paradise Lost. It was so amazing to see some of the manuscript from the 1660s on which Milton wrote the lines that made up Paradise Lost. It makes me want to go back and read more of the poem...

After leaving the Morgan, we walked a couple of blocks to the Ginger Man pub on 37th Street @ Madison. It was 4:30 in the afternoon, and we hadn't had food since breakfast! We were all pretty hungry.

We all decided to start off with a Ginger Man beer, which was pretty good! I drank about half of mine and gave the rest to Ben.

We studied the menu for a long while before making up our minds. I ordered a cup of lentil soup and a baked potato that came with cheddar cheese and bacon. (seriously!?) Ben and I splint the potato - thank goodness. The lentil soup was good, but it definitely had pork or sausage in the soup, which I thought was a little strange. I ate around the meat, and enjoyed the lentils and veggies.

After enjoying our lunch we walked around the city for a while. It had been raining all morning and afternoon, but the weather had started to clear up around 6pm! It is always fun to walk around New York. I am already busy planning my next trip - I have to go to MOMA and the Met soon and perhaps the Museum of Natural History.

I was a bit sad that I did not get to my favorite New York bagel shop - H&H Bagels. Yum. They serve their bagels FRESH and HOT and they are fantastic. I love their everything bagel!

We got back to Dobbs Ferry around 8pm and we all went out to dinner with Ben and Lara's aunt and uncle. It was a really cool restaurant in Hastings - on - Hudson called Maud's Tavern. Ben had a turkey burger, Lara ordered mussels and I enjoyed a garden salad which was fantastic! I actually ate the entire thing, which surprised me. It was one of the best garden salads I have had that I can remember.

We went home and watched the movie Iron Man on Blu-Ray! It was the first Blu-Ray movie I have ever seen, and it was amazing. I felt like the actors were in our living room - as Ben said, it was a little freaky! But soo cool. Around 10:30 I snacked on a package of peanut butter crackers I had left over from our Get out the Vote effort in New Hampshire last weekend. They really hit the spot.

We all got to bed a bit late last night, but I feel really well rested today. We have had a really fun weekend. I am so excited about this week at work - I have work tomorrow and then Tuesday off for Veterans Day. I sort of love having a day off in the middle of the week. I'm going to use it for going to the gym and the market. I plan to make some sort of soup and homemade bread that Ben and I can enjoy for the rest of the week... we shall see how that turns out!

So long for now. Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend, too!