NYC

A couple weeks after Scott left for New York City, I used the rest of my personal days at work to take another long weekend to visit him in the Big Apple. My flight got in rather late on Friday, so, in true New York fashion, we had a piece of black forest cake at midnight at a pastry shop down the street from our hostel in Manhattan. I love New York!

The morning on Saturday brought rainy weather, but that didn't stop us from having a fabulous day. We started the day off right with some sushi! After that we took a walk through Central Park on our way to the Metropolitan Museum of ART. Which we thought was pretty clever since it was a rainy day, however the rest of New York was apparently just as clever as we were. It was very crowed, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway. Scott got to see the Dutch paintings and I got to see my Italian paintings. I got to see some of the contemporary art too, but just as I was getting started they closed that part of the exhibit. Although I was disappointed, I did get to see their Jackson Pollock, so I was more than satisfied!

We started to make our way back to our hostel via Grand Central Station. While we were there, we got to have some dinner at Michael Jordan's restaurant...and by dinner I mean we each got an appetizer because we couldn't really afford to have dinner there. I had some blue cheese fondue, and Scott had some seafood chowder. Mmmmm.... When we had explored to our heart's content we hopped on the subway and back to our hostel in the pouring rain.

Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day, which we took full advantage of. We started the day by visiting ground zero. I expected it to be a bit more emotional experience than it was. There were construction crews working hard to rebuild. The experience of being there was poignant, but encouraging. There was an atmosphere of renewal and hope as we saw the new construction rising above the barricades surrounding the area where so much tragedy transpired just 8 years ago.

After some lunch we headed over to the Statue of Liberty. Again we were proud of ourselves for taking advantage of the great weather, and again the rest of New York City also seemed to have the same idea. This little adventure took up pretty much the rest of the day, but we just enjoyed being together, and got some great pictures! For dinner we had some special plans to eat at Cafe Du Soleil, a restaurant recommended by the curator Scott had been working with. It was a little French Bistro that had several menu items created from locally grown organic food. I had a salmon steak served medium, just like I like it, and Crème brûlée for dessert...so good. It was cozy and romantic, and a great ending to our last sight seeing day together.

Bright and early Monday morning I got up with Scott and went to work with him for a few hours to see what he had been up to the past couple weeks. We ate some lunch together, and then, once again it was time for us to say good-bye. Scott called me a cab and I headed back to Iowa, and looked forward to the next weekend when Scott would come home again for two whole weeks before heading to stop number 3 in phase 2 of the "Grand Tour:" Africa...