After mowing the lawn and doing some other household chores, Cat and I headed up to the city.   The plan was to spend the afternoon at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, as we had heard they were amazingly beautiful, and then meet up with Catherine's Bryn Mawr crew for dinner to celebrate her (and her friend's) 30th birthday.

 

By the time we got into the city, both of us were starving.  Rather than venturing out for lunch near the train station, I made the executive decision to wait unitl we got to Brooklyn to eat.  After a painfully slow subway ride (the express train wasn't running so we stopped at each stop on the way) we finally made it to the Botanical Gardens.  By this time we were both hungry and grumpy but much to my dismay there were  no places to eat right around the gardens. 

 

After wandering around we stumbled across a little farmers market.  Fortunately for us there was a street vendor and we got ourselves a couple of dogs and split a pretzel.  Although we weren't totally full, our hunger had been appeased.  We saw this guy who had dreadlocks litterally down to his waist....it was amazing. 

 

Finally we were ready to go to the gardens and experience some nature in the city.  As we got to the ticket booth, we handed the credit card to the person and at that exact moment the modem went down and they weren't able to take the credit card.  Fortunately the adjacent museum had an ATM and we were able to get cash.  Finally, all obstacles had been overcome.

 

We spent 3-4 hours wandering the gardens and having a very peaceful time...it was such a pretty day.  Although the roses weren't in full bloom, Catherine was very happy to see them all.  My favorite area of the gardens was the Japanese area.  Before we left, we found this huge expanse of lawn where everyone was just lying down and enjoying the beautiful weather.  It reminded me a lot of when I went to Europe with Alison and every day we found a park where I could lie down an take a nap.   Seriously, there's nothing better than a half hour power nap under a tree.

 

After the gardens we headed back into the city to meet up with Cat's friends.  Our reservation was at this trendy Thai place in SoHo.  SoHo (South of Houston --pronounced houseston) is totally a lively and fun area of the city.  We had a very good dinner and Cat had a great time catching up with her friends.  At the very end of the dinner, the other boy friend of the other birthday girl announced that they had gotten engaged the night before.  It was very cool to see how excited they were.

 

 

I keep trying to convince Cat that we should move into the city but I'm not sure the doggies would be super excited about moving from a house with a backyard to a 1 bedroom apartment.

 

Well that about sums up our fun day/evening in the city.