Much like the two previous days, we let the kids sleep in and only really got started with our day when everyone was up and ready. Yesterday was a hot one here in the big city and so after Z and I returned for our walk around the current blocks and reported that that it was quite unbearable, we delayed our departure even further. The agenda could wait for the sun to dip down a little so as to provide shade from the towering buildings that are impossibly everywhere.

All this to say, we did not leave our apartment until about 3:30 in the afternoon. This seems like wasting a day, but it still feels like we did a heck of a lot of stuff.

We walked to the subway, yellow line, and got on at 49th street headed south toward China Town and Little Italy. Arriving at the nearest stop, we departed and walked several more blocks on Canal street to where Google Maps said was the central spot. I kept thinking Google Maps was wrong. For sure most businesses were clearly Chinese and the lettering everywhere was a giveaway, but it did not have the “feel” I was expecting.

I’ve been to China Town in San Fran and so I guess that is more what I was expecting, lanterns strung across the streets and lots of little shops with souvenirs. There were lots of shops, and food markets, and restaurants, but we didn’t really stop to check them out. Well, the boys went into a fish market to see what that was like. We got enough of a smell from it from the outside and didn’t go in.

Little Italy is adjacent to Chinatown and we had passed it on our way, so we doubled back to explore that area. That was more like what I expected. Some of the streets were blocked off and were for pedestrian traffic only. There were gobs of people walking everywhere and we just walked among the crowd taking it all in. The goal before we left that area was to have a nice meal.

We walked to a place called Lombardos which is famous for something I guess but when we arrived the line was out the door and we had 4 teenagers growing more hangry by the minute. No joke. Both sets of siblings were at each other something quite fierce and the wait would have been a disaster.

Instead we doubled back again and found a place called Grotta Azzurra Ristorante. It was a sit down place where we were given a large table in the middle of the restaurant and spent over an hour and a half on a lovely meal. I had red wine and the chicken parmesan and the kids split a pepperoni pizza and had sodas. It was delicious. It was also nice to sit in the AC for that long.

After that we headed straight for the subway again with the plan being to head back north and past the stop which would be our exit for home base and get off on 77th street instead. A short distance from that stop was the Met (or Metropolitan Museum of Art) on 5th avenue, just inside the east side of Central Park. I don’t remember that from the Central Park tour we took on Thursday so that leads me to believe that the park is just way bigger than I think it is.

The Met itself is, of course, huge, and we arrived late in the day. We only had about 2 hours to wander the endless rooms of history. It’s more than just an art gallery, it’s a record of the people and cultures from so many eras of human kind. The cool things that we saw were numerous and after such a long day of a lot of walking, I’m sure that there is a lot that we missed just because of our short attention spans. Our group split up there and Jim and his half went one way and me and mine went another. Later in the evening when we came back together we compared notes and found that there really was, indeed, quite a lot that we had each missed. Our tickets are good through Monday so perhaps we will go back.

After all that adventure, we successfully avoided a repeat of what happened the previous night, which was teenagers complaining at 9 and 10 and 11PM that they were bored. Instead, they were all so tired they just wanted to be left alone in their rooms.

If I’m accounting everything, which I am attempting to do, I will also note that Miss Z complained that her head hurt during the day today and though she crashed out and went to sleep at about 9:30, she was up again close to 11PM with a migraine and it was a bad one. She got sick and I stayed up with her until just past 1am. Poor, sweet thing.

I myself can’t sleep much past 7 so it was a short night for me. We’ll see how everyone feels today about our first trip out of Manhattan. If there has been enough recovery, we’re headed back south and into Brooklyn. I want to see and do as much as possible, but it is just past 9AM now and I’m already feeling like I need a nap. Perhaps I should try and go back to bed.

Day turns into Night turns into Day,

~Miss SugarCookie