Maximizing a Sunday

My sister's friend Christine has a couple rules - "Go to a separate place for a drink before you go to dinner" is one, and "Maximize a Sunday" is the other. While both are great rules, I especially love the Sunday one: Don't mourn the weekend being over when you can enjoy the most out of the day you are in.

My friend Kathy came to town this past weekend from Chicago and a few college friends got together over the weekend to catch up and explore. Saturday we had a very NYC day -- meeting for brunch on the Upper East Side, then going to the the Robert Frank and Vermeer exhibits at the Met (pic 1), followed by dinner at Standard Grill at the new Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District. After dinner we walked the High Line (picture 2) an urban park transformed from forgotten elevated railroad lines.

Sunday was chilly and rainy, a day you would be tempted to stay in and watch TV (if you had a TV). Instead, Kathy and Jen came to Brooklyn with a plan of helping me explore the surrounding neighborhoods where I live now. Since Kathy is pregnant and I've brought a more suburban lifestyle sensibility back to New York, we drove, though without a map or much knowledge of where we were going. (California friends will likely appreciate that my navigation skills aren't any better in an urban environment...)

Three neighborhoods later (Cobble Hill, Fort Greene (pic 3), Dumbo (pic 4), and back to Brooklyn Heights), we met Antony for dinner at dinner at Noodle Pudding, a delicious and very popular restaurant on Henry Street I discovered last weekend with my friend Daniel who was visiting from San Francisco.

While there's certainly something to be said for knowing where you are going - as well as having a TV and a wardrobe appropriate for the climate you live in - there's also the pleasure of discovery. New York Part 2 continues to remind me life always bring new places to explore, people to meet, friends to know better, and something wonderful may just be waiting around the corner, when you're ready to look for it. Even on a Sunday.