Downtown

We spent Sunday 'downtown', in the lower end of Manhattan. Well, mostly. Dan and I spent a couple minutes under the Brooklyn Bridge because we missed our stop. We were following a map that didn't have enough detail and we knew something was wrong when the train went on a long fast curve. It didn't take us long to get turned back around. We picked up an official map with all the stops clearly marked, the first chance we had.

We attended Palm Sunday service at Trinity Church. A beautiful building and a beautiful service. The highlight was the Passion Story sung by five men. The low point was when Dan's phone rang during the service. The lady in front of us immediately checked to see if it was her phone and I very selfishly wished it was...but afraid not. We wanted to crawl under the pew!

We didn't stay for mass because Joe and Heather were meeting us. While we were waiting for them we strolled around Wall Street - saw where George Washington was sworn in as our first President and where Alexander Hamilton was buried.

We were staying dry despite the persistent drizzle so decided to take the ferry out to Liberty Island. I took some pictures but the windows on the boat were so filthy I doubt they'll turn out. We also took some fun shots on the island with Lady Liberty in the background.

Back on Manhattan, we ate tasty street vendor hot dogs (protecting them all the while from aggressive pigeons) and rambled up to South Street Seaport. We poked around there but it was mainly chain stores and rather grubby so I was happy to move on to Chinatown.

On the way we stopped at Strand Bookstore. What a great place to shop! It was clean and well organized.

No chain stores there but still plenty grubby which I expected. Everywhere you looked there were cheap watches and rip off handbags for sale. Add this to the list of things I have zero interest in. We ate at a really bad restaurant. I didn't order much; I sensed the food would be bad when the waiter brought tea in a dirty pot and motioned we were to drink it from our water glasses. Please! No nice handleless cups?!? The egg roll I had tasted like it was hatched last Easter and the soup was dirty broth with some shamefaced vegetables.

Do I sound all whiny and disappointed? I didn't feel that way at all. We had fun being together walking and talking and being places we've never been before.