I (heart) NYC!

One of my favorite things about living in Central New Jersey is that I am only an hour and 15 min train ride from New York City. I love visiting the city. I love the energy. I love the shops and restaurants. I love the yellow cabs. I love that I am all alone when surrounded by hundreds of people. I love exploring the different neighborhoods. I just love the city. I think it's beautiful.

Every two months or so, I like to take a day for myself and visit the city. I try to do something new each time. This time the plan was to visit the East Village. So, last weekend, my friend and I took the early Saturday train to the city and spent the whole day exploring. F U N !

First visit was the absolutely gorgeous Marimekko flagship store on the 5th avenue. LOVE it!!

Next we walked (while sipping our ice cold Jamba Juice) to Union Square Green Market where we enjoyed the bounty of beautiful farm fresh items and Finnish rye bread by Nordic Breads . Yum!! And, we almost saw Ted Allen from Food Network. (He was going to be doing a demo on canning, and, although we were interested in seeing him and the demo, we did not want to wait 45 minutes.)

We continued our walk to Washington Square Park where we found a street fair and bought some yummy fried dough, and took a well needed rest.

Our journey then continued to Soho where we happened to stumble upon this crazy looking doorway that was spray painted all over and had the neon orange sign "Kiosk" also spray painted on the sidewalk. I got super excited. I told my friend, "Oooooh! I read about this place. It's supposed to be really cool. Want to go in?" The trusting friend that she is, she followed me through the doorway into the staircase that looked nothing like a cool store nor a place where two young-ish women should have been without bodyguards. As I walk up the stairs determined that I knew exactly where I was going, I kept telling my friend, "It's OK. Just follow me. I read about this online."
And, sure enough, at the top of the stairs was the store called Kiosk. It is not an ordinary store. The items in the store are displayed like in a museum with a cool little description or a story of each item. The items are collected and brought to the store from all over the world. I was able to find few exciting items from Finland. If you are ever in Soho, you should definitely stop by Kiosk. It's super cool store.

After Kiosk, we finally made it to Purl Soho which was one of the main stops of our day. I just love going in there. I always buy something, but just being there is awesome. It was my friend's first time, and I think she fell in love. And, how couldn't you when they have green belt material with white polka dots on one side and white stripes on the other. Sigh!! Beautiful. 

By now, we were starving so we walked and walked and walked through Soho to East Village past BabyCakes Bakery to Ludlow street to have lunch at Katz's Deli. My new favorite at Katz's - brisket sandwich. Yum! Yum! Yum! 

On our way back from East Village and Soho to Penn Station, the day was starting to get darker, but we were still in search for some ice cream and maybe some shopping. We found Haagen Dazs store and had ice cream to keep us going. And, I also got to take my friend to another favorite store of mine in NYC. Fish Eddy. Super fun. Super cute. Super reasonable.

One of the funniest items in the store were plates that said things like "for the love of god stop eating" and "big mistake." LOL!

I bought one of these (pink) for O. So cute!

We had a great day exploring the city even after walking about thousand miles, and we can't wait to go back. And, one of the reasons is that we found this place on our way back. Chocolate fondue. Chocolate drinks. Chocolate desserts. CHOCOLATE.

Oh, how I love this city!