Afternoon in the museum

We are feeling a little New Yorked out after making another day trip to the city on Sunday. An old friend of R's and her husband were vacationing there, so we met up with them as well as some other mutual friends from the area. Our first stop was the American Museum of Natural History. A big, interesting place it is. Due to time constraints we had to take an abbreviated tour, but I can see how the place could take days to explore.

Oh yeah -- we had a star sighting at the museum. We saw this guy. You may have seen him in Roseanne or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Okay, so maybe calling him a star is stretching it, but he was famous enough for me to recognize his face and voice while I loosely trailed him through the dinosaur exhibit.

From there we worked our way through Central Park and relaxed on some shaded lawn. The weather was just barely on the hot side of perfect. We watched a roller-skate dance party, ate some ice cream sandwiches, and paid our respects at Strawberry Fields for the third time.

Following that, four of us went out for an awesome dinner at a restaurant on Houston named Jane. I highly recommend this place, especially if you happen to know one of the servers. My steak was already reasonably priced, but with all the freebies (champagne, calamari, cheese gnocchi, dessert wine, banana brulée) from our friend who waits/tends there, we made out like bandits -- stuffed bandits. Holy cow that was some good food.

We finished the night by meeting up with the rest of the group again for some Sapporo at a Japanese restaurant in the East Village... and then we made the late night trip home. It was quite a day. Recounting it now reminds me of why R and I were so worn out on Monday.

At least we're getting to the point now where we've seen the major touristy things in NYC already, so now when we go we can just enjoy it and not have to worry about checking things off our list. I also slacked off on the picture taking this time, so I don't have anything worth sharing. Sorry about that. Maybe next time.