new york, new york!

at long last, here are some pictures from our amazing trip to new york. i can't even begin to tell you how much fun we had! it's like we squeezed in a week's worth of fun into 4 days. and we stayed true to our mission of eating our way through the city, one veggie restaurant at a time. hot damn!!

here i am at the beginning of our trip, trying to look happy about the fact that i'm about to get on an airplane. little did i know at the time that i'd soon be in the smallest airplane imaginable sitting on the runway for 2 hours because laguardia wasn't letting planes land due to bad weather.


here's paul on our first night in the city. i think this is the coolest shot of him in times square. we passed through on our way to dinner at a veggie restaurant called zen palate. (the shepherd's pie croquettes were out of this world!!)


thursday's adventures started with a trip to curly's vegetarian lunch for our first meal of the day. mmmm...faux crab cakes. so delish! (that's my cousin michele and her husband deutsch, who we vacationed with in the city.)


after lunch we walked around and ended up at washington square park to see the doggies in the off-leash areas. we especially liked these guys in the "small dog area". eep, how cute!


then on we walked through soho (went into my first anthropologie store ever but couldn't afford any of it...bah!) and then on to little italy. i can't even tell you how wonderful it was to just walk and take in the city. i especially loved the beautiful architecture. i was overwhelmed by how old and lovely all of the buildings are! seriously...every building is old and gorgeous! i totally expected it to look like toronto but it's actually very different.




we walked over to the bowery and then to mooshoes...the mecca of sensible vegetarian shoes. ahhhhhh!


even the kittycats like to hang out there (there must have been about 7 or 8 hanging out inside the store). here's one snoozing on the shelf.


by this time we were all pretty much beat from all the walking (and walking, and walking....) and the stifling heat & humidity. luckily for us, teany was right around the corner from mooshoes so we stopped in to rest our feet and cool off with some iced tea and a cupcake (this one was coconut!)


no sooner did we walk in and paul spotted sofia coppola having cake with a friend. paul and i were a bit star-struck but michele and deutsch were totally cool...they live in l.a. and see celebs all the time. we weren't big goofs or anything but we did pretend to take a picture of michele and deutsch so that we could sneak a photo of sofia without bothering her. aren't we sneaky?!


after our little rest we were up again and on our way to chinatown to meet michelle, aaron, megan and her husband for dinner at vegetarian dim sum house. it was so nice to finally meet megan and to see michelle and aaron again. we had so much fun just sitting around and talking and laughing. (and eating and eating....) michelle and aaron are regulars there so they helped us pick out a bunch of great dim sum dishes to share including one with a mysterious name like "treasure balls with assorted flavour" or something equally cryptic. they were really yummy though...everything was! i could have happily eaten there every single night of our vacation but there were too many other restaurants we wanted to try.


after dinner michele, deutsch, paul, and i took the subway back to the hotel and rested a bit. we caught a bit of a second wind so we ventured out to find a pub for a couple of drinks before calling it a day.

*****
more pictures & stories to follow. there's too much to include in one blog entry!