With this trip being our first time staying in Brooklyn (our previous locales were Gramercy Park, The Piers, Central Park, Garment District, Madison Square Gardens, Jersey City and Queens), we set out to explore DUMBO (aka Down Under the Metropolitan Bridge Overpass).

I imagine that travelers ordinally gravitated to the area to see the Manhattan skyline, but as you can see the fog had rolled in with the persistent rain.

Many people chose this street to get their selfies in front of the bridge (us included-please ignore my rained on hair). We did some browsing at the weekend flea market but were soon looking for sustenance. It turned out that resulting lunch, was my favourite meal of the entire trip!

D had discovered it just around the corner from the flea market. It was an inauspicious little place but as soon as the aroma wafted from the open door, we knew that we were in for a treat.

This magazine feature taped to the wall by our stools indicated the success that was had when Jeremy Dean flipped his vegan bodega into a noodle house!

This decadent starter was assembled from mixed mushrooms, black garlic and yu choy dumplings. Absolutely stellar!

This noodle dish was named after the restaurant and were the silkiest, I have ever eaten.

We also tucked into a fried rice dish in a cardboard take out container, just because we wanted to eat with chopsticks right out of the carton like everyone does in shows and movies about NYC!

We had a lengthy subway ride back to the Theatre District for a matinee that we had gotten tix for in the Broadway lottery, but we were too early for curtain. So we spent some time in our favourite Bryant Park, our destination with every trip to the Big Apple.

Here is a reflection of the Empire State Building. One of many lovely aspects of this trip was because we had already done all the touirsty things on previous trips, so we could relax and return to our favourite spots.

There is always a point when I have been in New York, that I crave home-not my city house so much as our lake house. This is why.

The best thing about the Broadway play that we saw, were our great seats. Otherwise, I won’t even mention it.

We had dinner reservations at a place called Becco on Restaurant Row which was close to the Theatre District, so we first enjoyed a tea and pastry in the hood and then happy hour beverages, when we were still too early. D would say that Becco was well worth the trouble.

Lidia Bastianich and her son Joe, both of Food Network fame, are collaborators of the restaurant, so my sights were pretty high. D said that his choice of Cesar salad was the best he had ever tasted.

I very much enjoyed the anti-pasto, sharing the nibbles with D. My favourite taste prior to dinner was skinny little breadsticks rolled in course salt.

I am guessing that the proximity to the theatre district must have created their pasta tasting menu. Piping hot selections were served from skillet pans delivered by wandering chefs/servers. One was of el dente broccoli in a light sauce and the above was torn sheets of pasta in a seafood sauce with little morsels of more seafood peppering the dish. D loved both and had to decide which dish to have seconds of because the pasta came around and around until you yelled “Uncle!”

I loved the mushroom stuffed ravioli in an equally decadent mushroom cream sauce. We passed on desert and decided that a stroll through Times Square would be a great idea. D was doing some souvenir shopping for the kids and grandkids at home. He didn’t have the correct change for a t-shirt vendor, so the kind gentlemen said “Take the shirt and come back and pay me after you find an ATM”! We were so touched by his kindness.

Kath’s quote: “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it in five minutes as equally as five years.“-Tom Wolfe

Love never fails.

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