Our semi-interesting weekend

Yesterday we decided to go into the city, and in the spirit of seeing new places, we decided to tour the Lower East Side. Hit up wikipedia for a synopsis of this area, but in a nutshell, this largely Jewish area has historically been a working class neighborhood and up until 20 - 30 years ago, an area typically not visited due to the crime and rough edges. Like everywhere in Manhattan, it has been smoothed over and soaring real estate prices have pushed out many of the blue-collar people that once lived there. Home to Katz's deli, arguably the best pastrami in the nation, and we had actually been down in the area before, at night, to visit a burlesque club some months ago.

Anyways, as some of these pictures show, much of the streets probably haven't changed for a long time:



Kris told me this is Lil Kim:





The boys entertaining themselves as we walked down the sidewalk:


Thought this was funny:


So as you can tell, this is clearly a "different" sort of neighborhood than Greenwich Village or Midtown. While fascinating, this isn't the sort of place a family tends to take a leisurely stroll. Most of the folks we encountered were clearly locals. We had some incredible Greek gyro's though.

After that we drove around the city looking for something interesting (and celebrities), up 2nd from LES up into the Upper East Side (East 80's and 90's) then over the Fifth Avenue and drove down Fifth. Figured it was probably time to get home, so we booked it back through the Lincoln Tunnel and into Hoboken. We pretty much laid low the rest of the day.

Today we were productive for the first half of the day. Kris and I both hit the gym, made a great (late) brunch, took the dog for walks, etc. But all that came to a screeching halt around 2 when the thunder storms rolled in and it started raining like crazy. So we made another pot of coffee and spent most of the afternoon reading.

Rained so much today that areas of Hoboken, as usual, flooded:


Click on the above pic for more "Hoboken is flooded" pictures from the local blog.

Around 7 the fire alarm started going off in the building, so we all hurry to the front door, nearly rush out when we realized that Miles wasn't wearing any clothes under his little Kimono he was wearing! So I rushed him back into the room for some clothes, then we busted down the stairs and congregated with others exiting the building. FOUR fire trucks pull up, and no less than 12 guys in full gear enter the building to do the sweep. Turns out the garage was too hot. Go figure! I forgot my phone or else would have been twittering the hell out of that.

Pretty much entered our nightly "shower, brush teeth, read for 30 minutes, go to sleep" routine after that.

I have a back log of pictures that I have been meaning to blog, just haven't had the chance. I'll do an 'update' post before too long. I'm in the city tomorrow and in Greenwich, CT on Wednesday, so can probably find some time in there to post them.

Take care all!