Winter Already?!

Well, it's been a strange few months, weather-wise, all around the world. Certainly here in NYC, we've experienced incredibly mild weather for most of the winter. Until this week, there had only been a few nights when the temperature has dipped below freezing. The first Saturday in January, the afternoon was up to 20C (70F)!!! People were out in shorts and t-shirts, enjoying drinks on patios, playing ball in the parks... was a lovely day!

We spent the day in the Lower East Side. It used to be quite a poor district, but has become trendy of late. It is home to the Tenement Museum, where you can tour a tenement apartment and learn more about the history of the area. This area also has Katz's - an old deli specializing in HUGE sandwiches! (We shared a salami sandwich, and saved 2/3 of the filling for making sandwiches later in the week!) It was fun to wander around with a pair of Canadians we'd recently met, Jaime and Steven. We also visited the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art (MOCCA), which had a special on Saturday morning cartoons. Yay! I'd read about a lifesized Smurf village, and so was disappointed to see it was a diorama with those 1-inch tall plastic Smurfs I used to have as a kid. Still, the information and cels were fun.

Later that day, Toby and I stopped at a comfy tea/coffee shop, The Bean, and I had to try the expensive-but-exquisite sorbet from il laboratorio del gelato. Oh, and we saw the Cow Car! This vehicle was decked out to advertise for the rodeo at Madison Square Garden, and acted as a free taxi during this promotion!





Magnolias were budding, cherry trees were flowering (see photo above), squirrels were mating.... what will happen now that temperatures are dropping to near freezing? In fact, by Friday, it's supposed to be 20F (-5C). Unheard of in these parts! Puddles have a skim of ice (which dogs in the park seem to really enjoy breaking up). Luckily I got a new warm winter coat this past weekend!