Adventures in New York City

For the first time since we moved here, Tommy and I decided to drive down to Manhattan this weekend. I had taken a car in earlier in the week to give a presentation at Deloitte's World Financial Center office. On our way there, we passed directly by the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum and it was a really easy drive...

Well, its a really easy drive if you don't forget to make a turn. Tommy and I took a very scenic detour past the Bronx Zoo (at least we know where that is, now) and straight through the heart of the Bronx. We're lucky Tommy's phone had GPS, or we'd probably still be in the Bronx!

We finally did make it safe and sound to the Intrepid. The museum is set up inside a huge aircraft carrier (the Intrepid) that is Docked in a pier along the Hudson River. Neither Tommy nor I had ever been on an aircraft carrier before, so it was a pretty neat experience. Up on the deck of the carrier, they had planes set up, and the view of all of the planes on the aircraft carrier with the skyscrapers of Manhattan in the background was a cool view! Here are a few pictures:

Next, we headed to our third Borough of the day, Brooklyn. Many food guides, including my Zagat guide, have voted DiFara's Pizza in Brooklyn the best pizza in New York (and therefore, the best in the world, said one website!) for years in a row. We had to try it. Our drive to Brooklyn was as successful as our morning venture, and after a scenic tour of Manhattan, we made it to Brooklyn.

DiFara's is truly an experience. It is a tiny, hole-in-the-wall place with maybe 4 tables. The only person making pizzas is a ninety-something year-old Italian man, Domenico DeMarco who has been making pizza there since it opened in 1964. The process is the same with every pie: he stretches the dough into shape, spoons on the tomato sauce, and adds the cheese - both regular and fresh bufala mozarella, and drizzles it with olive oil. It goes in the oven - this guy must have hands of steel because I swear he can reach right into the oven and move all those pizzas around! When it comes out of the oven, he snips fresh basil on top of the pie, sprinkles it with more olive oil and some type of grated cheese.

The process isn't quick, Mr. DeMarco hand-makes every pie while his daughter takes orders, decades-old Italian music playing in the background and hungry patrons crowding around the counter. We waited about an hour for our 2 slices of regular cheese pizza at 3:30 in the afternoon, but it was worth it! Another true New York experience!

Cupcakes!

I feel a little silly writing a whole blog entry about cupcakes, but these were some GOOD cupcakes!!

Earlier this week, Tommy and I were planning to go into the City this weekend and I decided I wanted to find the best cupcakes in NYC (I have tried Magnolia Bakery a few times and haven't been overly impressed). I settled on Crumbs (just click the link and you'll understand why!). Friday afternoon I was showing Tommy the website when I made a very dangerous discovery - they have a location right here in Stamford, on my way home from work, no less.

Obviously, we had to immediately head to the cupcake store. I got a Caramel Apple cupcake and a Devil Dog cupcake (chocolate cake witha hostess cupcake-like filling). They were both delicious! Of course they were sweet, but not as overly sweet as I was thinking they would be. Here are a couple of photos. Tommy took the very artistic one of the Devil Dog cupcake!

What flavor should I try next?!?

Random

Just to catch everyone up, here are a few things that have happened in the past few weeks:

We found an amazing hamburger place in Greenwich - Burgers, Shakes and Fries. Its a definite hole-in-the-wall, and tiny, but the burgers (on Texas toast) were delicious. We'll be back!

Last Saturday, for the first time in a while, I didn't have to work. Still being Texans, we wanted to find something to do that did not involve being cold - which is hard to do in Connecticut in the winter! We finally decided on the Norwalk Aquarium. No, it probably wasn't the best aquarium in the world, but it wasn't bad for South Norwalk. We saw an Imax show, took a 3-D "ride" (skip it), and saw sharks, harbor seals, otters, African penguins, a huge sea turtle and all sorts of indigenous marine life - the Norwalk Aquarium focuses on the sea life in the Long Island Sound. I'm not so sure that we'll be headed back any time soon, but it was a good way to spend a cold winter day. We stopped by the Dutch store in SoNo and picked up some chocolate sprinkles, cheese and stroopwafels - yum!

Monday was another snow day - we got about a foot of snow. I'm really hoping its our last of the season - I'm ready for spring!!

This Friday, we headed back down to SoNo to meet up with some other MDPs who work in another group up here in Wilton. We started off with drinks at the Gingerman, dinner at Burger Bar, and finished up with an interesting 80's and 90's cover band at O'Neill's. It was so nice to get the chance to meet some more of the MDPs - I hope we get the chance to do this more often!

The other excitement of the weekend was my new vaccuum cleaner!! I know, this is a definite sign that I'm really getting old. We got a new Dyson DC 25. My old vaccuum had gotten to the point where I think it spewed out more dust than it picked up sometimes, so this is a definite upgrade!

On Tuesday, I'm headed in to NYC to give a presentation about the SEC and its review process to a group of college students. Wish me luck!!