Sunny Saturday and Sunday

We spent a lazy Saturday around the apartment, although I got a lot accomplished on putting together my portfolio. One of my final projects for pastry is to put together a portfolio of my work, to be presented at our graduation. I am happy I have been taking so many pictures all along, because I have a nice variety from which to choose. This will be great to have when I go job searching back in NC! Once I had most of the portfolio completed, Todd and I set off into the city to take a Circle Line cruise of the island of Manhattan. We've been meaning to do it since we got here, but I was spurred into action when a friend of mine from the admissions office at school mentioned that she was going on a cruise this weekend. (Well, we ended up running into her on the cruise boat, which was an unexpected surprise!)







The full tour around Manhattan is 3 hours long and narrated almost throughout. We started on the west side, 42nd Street at the Hudson River. The tour starts by going south in the Hudson, circling around by the Statue of Liberty and then going around the southern tip and back up the eastern side of the island in the East River. It was especially fun to pass our apartment and Roosevelt Island. (Todd spends his day working with a view of the river where the boat passes many times per day. It was nice for both of us to see the view from the OTHER side!) The tour continues by heading up the Harlem River and then through the Harlem River Ship Canal, which was built in 1895. The explosion that formed the canal separated one small part of the mainland (called Marble Hill) physically from Manhattan. Today, though, it is still politically part of Manhattan, even though it is a separate island. The northern part of Manhattan island is very green and very beautiful. I took a ton of pictures - here is just a sampling. This is one of our favorite things we've done in Manhattan so far. If you are ever here, or if you live in NY and are reading this, you really should go. It was worth every penny. The tour wrapped up around 7:30 pm, just as the sun was setting. We hopped a bus, then a train to SoHo and had dinner on the patio at Dos Caminos. We finished our evening with drinks at Pegu Club. We tried to play it cool (no gawking), so we're not sure if there were any A-list celebrities there.

This morning, we both awoke feeling rested and ready to go! We decided on an adventure in one of the burroughs - Brooklyn! We took the L train to Williamsburg and spent a couple of hours walking around. Somehow, it was 4:00 when we got home. I had decided to braise the remaining leg of lamb (it's hard for the two of us to eat an entire 5 pound leg of lamb), so I put it on the stove and we went down to the pool for an hour and a half. We had a nice dinner and have been hanging around the apartment ever since. Todd is working on some cool photography experiments. He promises that he WILL be guest blogging soon.