Accidental Tourists

We spent this weekend at home without visitors, and without any major plans.  Friday night we went with Kara to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the city that was tasty but a bit more expensive than menupages lead us to believe.  We were intending to see the movie Bridesmaids together afterward, but when we arrived at the intended theater we discovered that it was sold out.  Who knew this movie was so popular?  Apparently everybody else did, but not us.  Instead we split up and went to our respective homes.  Becky and I watched the season finale of Grey's Anatomy.  We took a long (years??) break from this show, but got sucked back in by the musical episode.  Marketing success I guess!

Saturday we did all the cleaning/errands/etc.  We also accomplished several of the little things that have been sitting on the to-do list forever.  I have no idea why we procrastinate on things that take two minutes, but somehow it always seems like there's a long list of them that we don't want to do.  You know, things like "e-mail the cat sitter about the honeymoon" and "tape the box shut on the swimsuit you need to return."  Are there classes we can take to learn how to stop procrastinating on this stuff? 

In the evening we had the stay-at-home version of date night.  We ate steak (a rarity around here!), worked on that deliciousness Becky already posted about, and watched The Tourist. 

On Sunday we went into the city to be at-home tourists.  But sadly we didn't get to meet Angelina Jolie or Johnny Depp and we did not get to steal 744 billion euros.  Too bad too, because the dollar is doing very little to get me excited to spend euros in just a few short weeks.  Thankfully my excitement is strong enough to sustain itself!  While waiting for our friend Stephanie and her daughter to arrive at our meeting point in Bryant Park we happened upon free outdoor ping pong tables.  I have no idea who comes up with this stuff.  But, due to the drizzly overcast weather, we were able to entertain ourselves with no wait. 

We then enjoyed a leasurely lunch at an umbrella covered table, followed by a ride on the carousel.  Yep, three adults and one toddler.  Got a problem with it? 

There's a cute little outdoor kids "reading room" right next to it.  Which, apparently, you can spend several hundred dollars to rent for your child's birthday party.  New Yorkers are seriously a little bit weird.  Nonetheless, it was fun to enjoy for free.  There's also a cool little outdoor bar in the park that we want to go back to sometime.  I had no idea there was so much cool stuff in there. 

When we were tired of getting damp we headed inside to the 100th birthday celebration of the New York Public Library.  The main branch of the library is one of those famous buildings that I've admired from the outside but never quite gotten around to going inside.  It's gorgeous!  I love old buildings, and if I had a time machine I would definitely travel back to pre-internet days and see what the library was like then.  Of course it's a good thing that information is more readily accessible now, but there must have been something really special about going to a huge gorgeous library when it was the only way to possibly access certain pieces of information. 

They had a storytelling festival going on, with some really talented storytellers.  Several kids in the audience were really absorbed by it, but Stephanie's daughter was much more intrigued by the folding chairs in the auditorium.  They were obviously not designed for the weight of children, and kept trying to fold up with the children still sitting in them. 

We also explored the children's center and by chance happened upon something that has been on our to-see-in-NYC list since the beginning: the original Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals!  No flash photography was allowed, but you can see here Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Kanga, and of course....their friend the otter?