veryone seems to go to New York for shopping, but honestly, I’m not that big on it (well, except online shopping). We did make an exception though, to check out an antiques show and ginormous toy store.

But forget shopping, what we ended up doing most of the time here was eat. We ate until we couldn’t eat anymore. Then we would impatiently wait for our food to digest so we could continue our quest for food. To me, New York is not a place for shopping – it’s place for eating.

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Antiques Garage

It was a beautiful day in NYC. We walked over to the Antiques Garage on West 25th, between 6th and 7th Avenue. One of my favorite things to do is hunt for goodies from the 1950s-1970s.

The Antiques Garage is open on Saturdays and Sundays. It’s not big, but it’s fun.

It’s really in a parking garage! How cool is that?

I think most of the good stuff was gone by the time we got there, but that’s ok because we couldn’t bring back much since we were traveling.

Funky vintage clothes. Smelled funky, too.

Mike found some goggles that he could use in the woodshop. They were too small, though.

It’s a trumpet that looks like the Beatles’s Yellow Submarine.

I collect vintage food ads. I bought these for $5 each – they’re ads for lemons from Santa Barbara.

Cool African tribal art.

We saw this guy when we left the garage – he was dressed completely in (matching) whites. He was even holding a white shopping bag.

F.A.O. Schwartz

We took a trip to F.A.O Schwartz. This place always has a way of feeling magical.

A Batman made out of logos and a room full of giant pink dogs.

My kind of zoo.

We were greeted by giant bears.

I married a bear at the Clifford chapel. “Bear, I love you forever.”

It’s a dream come true! Rabbits everywhere!

Mike and five rabbit finger puppets.

I’ve never been so happy.

Good Eats

We used the Yelp app on the iPhone to find yummy places to eat – it makes it easy to find restaurants with 300+ reviews in a 2 block radius. But even without the app, all the places we went to exceeded our expectations. I am in love with New York food. It’s like San Francisco food – diverse, fresh, lots of flavor – but without all the organic/local/flax seed/twenty-grain-bread hoopla.

Here’s some of the stuff we’ve been eating. But don’t worry, I have more food photos to come.

I went to a random Japanese restaurant and ordered the standard sashimi dish…and got a 19-piece order of sashimi. Holy moly. And yes, I did eat the creepy octopus tentacle.

Pizza is everywhere, and it’s always good. I’ve had amazing pizza here, and even the food from cheap pizza joints taste much better than the average pizza back home – the standard for pizza is just much, much higher. I’m going to miss New York pizza – they’re light, uncomplicated, and slightly cracker-like.

Mike is from Georgia, so he can appreciate good BBQ. The weather was bad for a of the nights we were here, so we had food from a local place called Hills Country BBQ. It was really good…the corn pudding is to die for.

Mike’s beef brisket.

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