Touring Locally

Little house in Lancaster County. I don't know what these are used for. Maybe storage or an outhouse?

Field in Bird-in-Hand, PA

Amish Buggy Ride


At the restaurant Red

View of Brooklyn from Manhattan.

Sal & I spent the last few days acting like tourists around New York and Pennsylvania.

On Thursday we hit the road looking for some action in Long Island. We didn't find much "action", but we got a chance to taste some L.I. Pizza at The Pie at Salvatore's in Bay Shore. Very good looking restaurant and the pizza wasn't that bad. (Brooklyn's pizza #1) from there we visited Robert Moses State Park, which was relaxing. On the way back home we found a Trader Joe's which was great because we've only been to the one in Manhattan which is usually filled with a mile long checkout line so we always end up running out of there empty handed.

On Friday we had our eyes set on Pennsylvania Dutch Country. When we arrived we were greeted with scorching heat and fake handmade primitive products. I had my heart set on finding something handmade from a local woodworker but all we came across were shops with primitive-style items. I picked up a set of vintage-looking spools and I knew when I saw the "Made in China" sticker on the bottom it was time to get the F outta there. Actually before we high-tailed out of there we stopped off for some more fakeness. We took a Amish Buggy Ride (pictured above) which was such a disappointment because it was so obvious that they were just trying to take advantage of tourist money. It would have been more realistic if the "Amish" dude would have not taken out his CELLPHONE!!!!!! I mean, come on, I felt like Brooklyn was more handmade, natural, organic than that place! Sal insisted on purchasing A shoo-fly pie before we left even after I pointed out that some of the "natural" products had high fructose corn syrup in it. Isn't that bad for you?? I am sure if we had ventured more off the main road we would have found more authentic handicrafts and food items. Maybe. The only positive thing that I took away from the experience was during the buggy ride the passengers commented about how beautiful the land was and the Amish dude said, "The Lord created all of this, we just take care of it". Good job Lord, it really was beautiful.

Did you fall asleep yet from this long post? Well have some caffeine cause I'm only half way finished. Then we went to Philly from Lancaster County. We wanted to check out First Friday, a monthly event in which all the galleries stay open late and the streets are packed full of people. I was very happy to see people really into supporting their local artists. We should have this type of event in New York, it is a great idea. While in Philly we ate at Pizzicato on Market St. The pizza was appallingly bad for a gourmet pizza joint. Good thing we had ordered some entrees which were decent or we would have been crying.

On Saturday we did a little tourist action in NYC. We parked our car in Brooklyn Heights and then walked over the Brooklyn Bridge towards the South Street Seaport. It was a beautiful day out so it was nice to be by the water. After walking around a bit we searched around for an hour to find someplace that looked decent to have dinner. We decided to eat at Red. We had a pretty good meal minus the nail-polish remover tasting pomegranate frozen margarita I imbibed.

And if we didn't sound gluttonous enough... we took the train back to the car and headed back to Manhattan to check out the fancy schmancy ice cream place Grom. We had to wait on a gigantoid line of at least 60 people, which was pretty embarrassing. The passerbys felt free to shout out their opinions of how dumb we all were for waiting on such a big line for a scoop of $5 ice cream. Anyhoooo... I had pistachio, it was pretty good. :D Ok, that's it. Back to work for me.