Two of my favourite hobbies...Shopping and Eating!

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Pretty laidback day
Shopping, eating & shopping
Day of consuming!

Maria had as appointment in town today around 3:30PM so there three of us made plans for lunch at the Blue Water Grill in Union Square. Since Maria and I wanted to check out a few stores and do a little shopping before lunch we left for the LIRR earlier than Eric.

Well, actually we left twice before Eric. Maria and I made it to the LIRR station which is just a two block walk in less than 5 minutes and waited up on the platform. Hmm, the train is a couple minutes late. Wait, I see it coming. That’s when Maria turned to me and said she was not feeling very well. So we head back home…No problem, the next train is in about an hour. Hopefully Maria will be feeling better by this time. We head out a second time to the LIRR station and Maria’s feeling a lot better so we board the train that will take us directly to NYC’s Penn Station on 34th and 7th. A mere 25 minute journey! Pretty quick in my opinion especially compared to yesterday one hour plus journey by bus and subway with two transfers.

We still had plenty of time to check out DSW (Huge shoe store. I think DSW stands for Discount Shoe Warehouse…) and we also checked out some clothing stores and the sales racks. Ann Taylor had the most gorgeous plum coloured raincoat for only $99 plus Maria had a 15% off coupon…BUT I resisted buying it because 1) I bought that Navy INC one (hmm, I guess 2 years ago now!) 2) I got that longer jacket made in Vietnam and 3) It will not fit in my backpack. The only pluses I had for buying the jacket were 1) I don’t have a plum coloured rain jacket 2) It looked damn fine on me! Lol and 3) The price was pretty reasonable. Hmm, perhaps I will have to rethink this one…one last chance to buy it in Atlanta. Lol

After all of the window shopping, I walked away with buying nothing! Whoo hoo! Maria picked up a couple of pants and shorts since she has recently lost some weight and none of her pants currently fit.

Before we knew it, 1PM was upon us and our stomachs were rumbling! So we headed over to the Blue Water Grill and were there a little early for our 1:15PM reservation. We got a seat in the waiting area and waited for Eric to show up. We didn’t have to wait long for our table. The ambiance was really nice with the two musicians playing the bass…I think! Maria originally wanted to eat down in the Jazz room but we were out of luck and it was closed.

For lunch I ordered an awesome eggs benedict with salmon special and every meal comes with a complimentary drink so I ordered myself a bellini. It wasn’t as good as the ones you get at Milestones but I drank up anyway. Lol We had a really nice meal and were all re-energized for a bit more shopping. By some strange miracle I was able to snatch the bill and keep it and actually was able to pay for our meal for once. Eric and Maria have been so generous the last few days…wanting to pay for everything.

We shopped some more and eventually met up with Eric at one of the Starbucks. We’d all had tea and coffee at lunch so none of us got anything at Starbucks. We were just sitting at a table and talking and people watching for a bit before deciding to head over to Barnes & Noble. Plus, hanging out at Starbucks was a great place to get out of the rain that was on again/off again.

I spent quite a bit of time browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble while Maria and Eric went off their appointment. I started out in the Crafts area and saw so many books that I wanted to buy. But there was no way to justify buying any of them. Browsing through the knitting books, especially the Debbie Bliss ones, I felt like knitting. Not really practical when backpacking! Then onto the quilting books and I started to think of the quilt I started ages ago. Hmm, can’t work on that either. Then guess what? The scrapbooking, book arts and papercraft section came up. That was really tough resisting the urge to purchase. But I was good. Looked only and tried to remember the ideas I had seen and also some of my own inspirations. Now I really can’t wait to start on my scrapbook of this year’s travels! But yet again it’ll have to wait since I can’t be scrapbooking while traveling. Lol Now that’d just be plain crazy...even for me! Mind you, if I got rid of 80% of my clothes and books and stuff I’d be able to lug my scrapbooking stuff around. Lol Okay, I was only trying to be funny…Oh there was this one irritating couple sitting in front of one of the set of shelves with books. So I say excuse me when I had to reach over them for some books. I guess I was standing a little too close to them while flipping through some books and the lady says to me, “Can you no hover over us?” “Oh, I’m sorry. I was just trying to look at some of the books you’re sitting in front of…” and I take a few steps away. I’m thinking if you don’t want people to hover over you perhaps you shouldn’t sit in front of a shelf of books that people might want to look at! After a while, more people came by to also look at the scrapbooking books and you should have seen this lady and all the comments she made towards other “hoverers”. After a while it became quite amusing for me to watch since by this time I had moved to the adjacent section - cooking. I didn’t stay there for long since looking at all of the pictures of food just made me want to go out and eat. So I moved onto the magazines and then the travel section. I got away with only buying one book - “Without Reservation…the travels of an independent Woman.” I could justify this purchase because I need a book to read other than my travel guides and secondly I wanted to read about another independent traveller’s stories and experiences. Plus it wasn’t too pricey either.

6:15 rolls around and I finally get a call from Maria telling me she’ll meet me outside in about 5 minutes. Wow, that was a long wait! But no worries on my part since I had lots to look at while at Barnes & Noble. I didn’t even get a chance to check out the top sellers! Oh well.

We missed the LIRR so we took the longer route home via the #7 train. For the most part the ride was uneventful but there are quite a few people that will board a train and then start making speeches like, “Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Jason and I’ve been homeless and out of work for 11 months. I’m drug free and trying to find work but right now I’m hungry. Really, really hungry. If you could spare some change or even some food, I would be really, really grateful.” I said to Eric, “Hmm, I guess it wouldn’t be good for me to say to Jason…I’ve been out of work for eight months myself…”lol

There were also a few a cappella singers or musicians that boarded the trains and entertained the car in hopes of making some money…some performers were good but many were not so good!

We eventually got home and stopped by for some Japanese take away for dinner. Yum! We also continued to watch Star Wars Episode II but I didn’t get to see the end since Tony called me back. I can’t believe we chatted for almost 1 ½ hours! I look forward to meeting up with him for dinner tomorrow night. It’s been a while…hopefully after tonight’s conversation we’ll still have something to talk about. Lol I’m sure we will since I seem to have the gift of the gab sometimes. Plus there are always travel stories to tell…whether Tony wants to hear them or not. haha

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