Sightseeing, Shopping, Famous Ladies

Kristen arrived on Friday night for a weekend visit in NYC! She flew in early iin the day, so Todd took the afternoon off to do some sightseeing with her. They went to the Empire State Building (I hear it was windy), and then to the MoMA for the Target Free Fridays. I met up with them after class for a drink at The Modern, a restaurant in the MoMa. From there, we went down to SoHo and found a place to have dinner. We weren't out too late since we had plans for a busy day on Saturday. For those of you who don't know Kristen, she likes to shop even more than me so I was excited about having an excuse to hit the pavement this weekend.




We started out Saturday at Ground Zero, then shopping in SoHo, stopping for European Hot Chocolate at Marie Belle. We had lunch in SoHo before heading back to Roosevelt Island to get cleaned up. We picked up Todd and went to the Meatpacking District for dinner. We ate at a place called Nero - it was great Italian food and drink. (Lots of Italian here, but all different.) We had brunch at Balthazar on Sunday morning and then took a downtown train to Whitehall Street to catch the (free) Staten Island Ferry. The ferry leaves every 30 minutes and takes about 25 minutes to go from lower Manhattan to Staten Island. As I understand it, the ferry is provided as a free service so that people who work in Manhattan are encouraged to spread out and move to a place like Staten Island. While waiting in the terminal for the next boat to leave, we made friends with this bomb-sniffing dog, Gillian. (She was also very good at sniffing out the leftover bread from brunch in my to-go bag.) The ferry is supposedly one of the best kept secrets in NYC. I have to agree. It provides a great view of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Manhattan skyline. We were on Staten Island long enough to circle around the terminal and catch the same ferry back to NYC 5 minutes later. Round trip = 1 hour. The afternoon also held a visit to see another, not-quite-so-famous, lady, Beverly Feldman. Beverly Feldman (www.beverlyfeldmanshoes.com) sells some outrageous, Hollywood-style shoes. Fitting that Kristen found out about it and wanted us to fit a visit into our weekend. Here she is trying on a (very expensive) pair of flashy shoes.