We met Jordi at the entrance to Chelsea Market and immediately encountered the next problem - where to eat lunch?
The answer was pretty easy - Amy's Bread. Sorry all you GF gals, the bread and bakery here is absolutely yummy!
We enjoyed the artwork on the walls here in the market too.
Next stop was a familiar haunt on Sullivan Street - Purl. I had someone's money to spend ;-) See how dark it is - only about 2pm but the heavens had opened and the rain was coming down in stair-rods.
After a short respite from the weather in a nearby Starbucks, we hurried up to our next appointment at The Tenement Museum, one of the highlights of this trip. Jordi had booked us on the "Piecing it together" tour, focusing on a couple of immigrant families involved in the sweatshops of the garment district in the early 20th century.
This photograph comes from the Tenement Museum Flickr group - this is a truly special place to visit and our excellent educator, Katie, gave us a wonderful insight into the lives of these people. Strangely, as we drove from the airport this morning, we heard references to the museum on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour - how spooky is that?
The museum is well worth a visit.
Dinner on Monday evening was at Otto - Mario Batali's pizza restaurant, with olive oil ice cream on the menu for dessert!
Yesterday morning, Tuesday, was our last opportunity to gather up a few last minute things and to visit a few places nearby which we'd been walking past all weekend saying "there's lots of time to take a closer look". This included the Bryant Park ice rink - cold and unatmospheric at 9am on a Tuesday morning but fairly busy with some enthusiastic skaters out there.
I had a list to fulfil at M&J Trimmings on 6th Avenue - a wonderful treasure trove of all kinds of ribbons and buttons and somewhere I could spend hours just looking around.
But something else was waiting.
We met Jordi for our last lunch of the trip at Katz's Deli - scene of the "When Harry met Sally" moment.
Our first time here and it's quite a place - the sandwiches are quite something, too!
And that, was that. A quick farewell to Jordi whilst on the subway - till next time - and having packed our bags and made our way to JFK, we were on our way home.
What a great trip!
