We checked into our gorgeous brownstone BnB in west 22nd st in beautiful Chelsea and while we waited for our room to be cleaned we had 5 hours to kill. We walked up 8 blocks to the department store Macy's (www.macys.com) and literally shuffled and dragged our feet around 9 floors of every possible fashion style you could imagine. Unfortunately we felt like the walking dead and couldn't even summon enough energy to try anything on - yep, we were pretty pathetic but we truly nearly did fall asleep in the soup we got for lunch as we couldn't stop fantasizing about lying down. Finally 5 hours passed and we slept-walked back to our BnB and passed out on our beds - which felt like soft clouds! - for a revitalizing 4 hours then headed out to explore the streets for dinner and ended up at a great restaurant called Morans (www.moransrestaurant.com). I had a delicious pear and cucumber salad with some sort of honey dressing which was devine and a chicken pie. Cara had a lovely piece of salmon in a butter sauce with rice and broccoli which was also very nice! Then we headed back to the BnB and fell into deep comas for 12 hours and woke at midday completely missing the breakfast part of the BnB experience .... oh well the quality sleep on our soft clouds was worth it!
DAY 2: so our first day in New York where we felt like humans was a great start to our 3 weeks here. We walked around the corner into 9th ave (between 21st and 22nd st) to Billy's Bakery (billysbakerynyc.com) which Cara and I fell in love with. It's a charming old fashioned home-bakery styled in a 1950s look and completely cosy.
I tried chocolate cake (it was rich and gooey - yum!) and Cara had a cookie sandwich.
After taking LOTS of photos of cake and Cara with cake (!) we headed south into the Chelsea shopping area and stumbled onto Chelsea Markets (www.chelseamarket.com) which is an AMAZING collection of shops and eateries under one very groovy roof!
There were really cool and spooky Halloween decorations throughout and I definitely give kudos to the Americans for their Halloween-styling - they have it beat!
We loved, loved, loved the store Anthropologie (www.anthropologie.com) and spent about 2 hours there oohing and arrhing over the treasures on offer. Someone seriously needs to bring those stores to Australia.
Then it was hot soup time again after working up an appetite watching the bakers bake Bread (www.amysbread.com) in their glass front industrial kitchen. Very impressive stuff and loved the huge wooden paddle they used to bring out huge trays of bread from the massive layered oven.
Next we headed home for a little rest before literally walking in big circles around our neighborhood trying to find a restaurant that grabbed us. After walking for over an hour and an encounter with a crazy guy that we think had voices in his head (!) we ended up one block from home at the New York Burger Co which did fab burgers. Then once again it was back to our soft clouds and hours of fun channel surfing through the 700 channels on offer - you just can't help but love a country with that much tv on offer!!
I'm over and out back to Cara to talk about our walking adventure today ......
Location:Chelsea, 22nd street west
