Day Four: Riverside Park, Farmers Market, St. Johns & Sookks

Reuben has preschool on Mondays and Thursdays, and he loves it. It's a co-op preschool that some of the mothers in the ward (including Brecken) are a part of it. One of the mothers who got her degree in early childhood put together the syllabus and schedule, and then each mother takes care of hosting/running preschool for a week at a time. Reuben loves it every time, and Brecken loves it when it's the OTHER mothers' turn to take it :)

This morning Justin dropped Reuben off at preschool at 9am, and Brecken and I picked him up at 11:30am. They were all down at one of the playgrounds at Riverside Park for the last half hour (playtime), so that's where we went to pick him up. We had a lovely walk down there - I really really love Riverside Park (I think I mention it in my 'day one' post). It was also great to meet a couple of the other mothers who were picking their kids up, and to get a peak at Brecken's real NY lifestyle (as opposed to her playing-tourist-with-Tammy lifestyle). Most days Brecken says she'd stay a couple of hours at the park so Reuben could play, and it seems like lots of the other mothers do things like that too, so there's a really sociable neighbourly feeling to the whole thing - much more so than if you took your kid to the park in the suburbs :)

We got Reuben a SpongeBob icecream from the icecream truck (which looks nothing like SpongeBob), and then we headed off to the Farmers Market.



We forgot to take any photos of the farmers market, but it was really cute. Apparently it springs up there on the footpath outside Columbia University, every Thursday. They sold lots of fruit and vegetables and baked goods and fish. It was a lot of fun just to wander up and down there. Brecken got some apples for a pie she's going to make, and we got some asparagus, as well as a donut each :) I also got a little pumpkin pie from the people that grown the pumpkins and then make pies :) It was yummy!

While we were there, we also wandered onto the Columbia University campus, where Justin is just on the verge of graduating with his MFA in screenwriting. What a beautiful, beautiful campus! Such gorgeous old buildings with wonderful landscaping - and of course it was one of those perfect Spring days I remember so well from my BYU days. The kind of days that bring every student out onto the lawns and steps and paths, creating that laid-back, life-is-perfect mood that lulls every student into a false sense of security since their finals are JUST around the corner :) Incidently, Justin tells me they shot the Spiderman and Ghostbusters movies on Columiba's campus.

From the university, we set off for St. John's cathedral. It's a really, really beautiful cathedral - and very big. I think Brecken said it's the largest Gothic Cathedral in North America - but check the comments on this post in case Brecken needs to correct me :) Take a quick look at this link unless you're particuarly oppossed to Wikipedia (come on Abby & Emily, it's not as if I'm writing an English Assignment lol).







After the cathedral, we took 20-30 minutes to wander over to the Thai restraunt B&J love - Sookk. On the way, we passed a building with a plaque that made me go 'Brecken! Stop! Take a photo! This is where George GERSHWIN lived!' :) Brecken had actually never noticed it before (good thing she has me here to show here the TRUE gems of the city), so we took a photo :)



I realize that we only took a photo of the sign, so you have no idea what kind of building it was, but it was a nice building. Rest assured :) All the buildings are nice here in the upper west side. Really, I LOVE this neighbourhood.

We got to Sookk about 20minutes before Justin was supposed to meet us, so we walked over to a bench and took a seat to wait for him. This little part of the day was probably fairly forgettable for Brecken, but I loved it! Sitting on a bench watching the world go by? If I lived in NY, I reckon I'd do a lot of bench sitting :)

And then of course lunch (which was actually more like dinner at this point) was wonderful. Very yummy food, cute/trendy little restraunt, and lots of fabulous company and conversation. We spent a good couple of hours there, and the waitress took a photo of us on the way out - sorry it's so out of focus, but I thought you'd probably still prefer to see it.



It was starting to rain as we left the restraunt, so our plans to head on over to Central Park were deemed a bad idea. It was about 4 or 4:30pm by then anway, and I think we were all actually silently grateful that we could just go home. Actually, I'm not sure if Reuben was silently grateful not to go to the park... :)

We went home and watched 'You've Got Mail', since we still hadn't seen it since our trapse around the city. Such a great movie - I really do think it's got to be one of the more perfect examples of scripting in the Romantic/Comedy genre. And of course, it was fun to see all the places we'd been to.

Ahhhh. Another perfect day. Gotta say - I'm in love with this city. And I'm just a little chuffed to see that it really is as good as I always knew it would be - lol! I always SAID there was just a little New Yorker in me ;)