New York City - Day 7

Happy 4th of July!
Being Sunday, the city slept in and so did we.  I vaguely remember hearing the church bells ringing around 10:30 am.  Once we were up and moving, we packed a picnic lunch and caught a cab to Central Park.  We walked around a bit, looking for an area where the grass was green and it wasn't too crowded.  We settled in a spot fairly close to the carousel, laid out our blankets and set out our feast.  We had pita with hummus, brie, gouda cheese, salami, coppa, prochutto, and salmon along with french bread.  We sampled 2 different beers: a Brooklyn made Sorachi Ace and Saison Dupont, a Belgian Farmhouse Ale.  Both were rich and hoppy, a good accompaniment to our food spread.  For dessert we had a small dessert tray with pastries plus some wonderful toffee.  Satisfied, we chatted, tried to guess the current song being played on the carousel, and laid down, dozing occasionally.  It was after 6:00 pm when we gathered our stuff up and caught a cab back to the apartment to rest before the evening events began.

Fireworks in NYC!  We left our apartment at dusk and took a cab into midtown.  The firework display would be over the Hudson River.  By now the crowd of people was pretty thick, in fact the cab had to drop us off quite a ways away because of the traffic and closed roads.  We walked a few blocks, got as close as we could, and settled in to watch the fireworks!  It was an amazing event as you can see from the pictures included in the blog.  It is hard to describe, but the fireworks went for blocks along the Hudson River, timed so that they went off all at the same time.  Fabulous!

When the fireworks show ended, we moved slowly due to the number of people.  We walked to the Meat Packing District, looking for a restaurant that wasn't overflowing with people.  We found a very interesting place called The Collective.  It served American food, but what made it so interesting was the decor.  Everything was made from or decorated with found and recycled material.

In the first restaurant picture, license plates are bent and hung from the ceiling to look like a flock of birds!

The hanging lights were fun!  They were made from a round paper lantern, the type you might buy at World Market.  Plastic cups were then attached to completely cover the paper lantern.  Some of the lights also had straws glued into the cups.  This would be a fun and easy to make light to have at home.....check with Julie if you want more detailed instructions on how to make one.

Raven ordered the grilled watermelon salad shown in this picture.  Rainy had a penne pasta dish and Julie had an outstanding burger with spicy fries.

Another interior shot.  If you look closely at this lamp, you can see black straws protruding from some of the cups.
We shared seared tuna for our appetizer.

Rainy & Raven