The east coast post

We officially crossed the country when we arrived in New York City on July 28. All of the great museums, parks, and sightseeing opportunities aside, I think I was most excited to get a real bagel and good pizza. Despite the gourmet food and great local produce for which California is known, I haven't had a good bagel or slice of thin-crust pizza in the 10 years I've lived in the Bay Area.


We managed to pack a lot of interesting sight-seeing and excellent eating in to 3 days. I'll try not to bore with a long description of each place we visited, but needless to say we did a lot of walking despite the 90+ heat. We viewed the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry, walked around Ground Zero, visited the Guggenheim, and ate some great pizza at Villa Pizza. This place is a total hole in the wall but served up the perfect New York style pizza - crispy crust, sweet sauce and savory cheese. The next day we planned our sightseeing around the perfect bagel, which we found at Ess-a-Bagel. Chris didn't believe that good bagels did not need to be toasted until we tucked into these exquisite doughy, soft bagels with the ultimate crispy outside. With very full stomachs we then wandered around Soho and Greenwich Village before visiting a the International Center for Photography. On our last day we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge followed by a bike ride through central park. On our way back from Central Park, we biked through Times Square (video available here), at this point pretty comfortable playing Frogger with the taxis, pedestrians, and various delivery trucks.

After the bustle and noise of the city, we then enjoyed a couple of very peaceful days in Brewster MA on the Cape, as well as time visiting family and friends in Boston and Concord MA.  We're currently in Florida with Chris's family and will be heading for the Mexican border at the beginning of September.  A couple of weeks in the same place should do us some good.

How many people could you fit in a Honda Element?