Sunday

Today Carol, Katie and I had a nice farewell breakfast in a traditional American place serving traditional American food. Carol and Katie left late morning for their flghts to St Louis to stay with Wendy and Co.  She was very pleased to be going. She had originally planned to leave last Friday but the foul weather intervened and her flight was canceled . I was sad to see them go and it took me a little while to decide what I felt like doing.  I decided I wanted some seafood soup for lunch and so caught a subway train to the Flat iron district and went to Eataly. As good a way of deciding what to do as any other.

Eataly is like a big fancy delicatessen with little cafes dotted through it.  Near the huge counter selling fresh fish there is a small area with tables where you can sit down and have a seafood lunch. Near the meat section is another area where you can eat meat etc etc. You can have wine with your fish but you cannot , as I discovered, have a coffee. You have to go to the coffee bar for that. The first time I went to an Eataly was in Bologna in 2010 and a few weeks later I went to the huge one in Turin which is where the whole chain started. It was massive and less refined than the one here. I remeber being impressed with a whole section downstairs which has wine vats on their sides, maybe 3 reds and 3 whites. You brought your own bottles in and filled them up. Apparently quite respectable drinking wine.  There was also a section where you could fill your own bottles with milk from  a big vat.

Next stop was a large sport wear shop where I was hoping to get some gloves. It was easy to get someone to help and so i quickly found out they had run out of warm gloves in women's sizes, but not in mens. When you are trussed up like an Eskimo who cares what your gloves look like. I settled on some thin gloves with ends on some fingers so I can use my phone/ camera  and over the top  a pair of mittens  with an extension that unfold to revel topless fingers, but in my case will reveal the under gloves.

I had on my list a nearby coffee shop , part of a chain, Think Coffee that I had read about that sources ethically , environmentally sound  etc etc coffee and gives back to some communities. The people were friendly, the coffee was excellent. Enough for the day.