Trip to Jersey

Our New Jersey weekend getaway started out in Brooklyn. Spooky gave us a warm welcome (well, in her own way. And by warm I mean the kind where you don't get up from where you're sitting, regard your visitors with indifference, and don't acknowledge their super cool present of two sparkly toys).

After some unspectacular crepes in Chelsea, our first coffee of the day at 12:30 pm (I know. Just try to imagine), and a stroll through the meatpacking district to Washington Square Park, we decided it was just obscenely hot. 90 degrees is hot in September anywhere, but in NYC, where the subway stations are somehow even hotter (mind you, they are below ground, hence the name "subway." Yet, unlike your childhood basement, each stair you descend makes you more uncomfortable), it is intolerable. So we decided to go to the Guggenheim museum, to which neither of us had ever been. Not only did it involve a long-ish ride in the subway (which is air-conditioned) and an exhibit of Russian art from the Orthodox inconographic paintings of the 15th Century to modern stuff just opening that day (and enticingly named RUSSIA!), we felt a little Midwestern pride over seeing the Frankie Wright building.

Here's an example of what we saw. This is a modern sculpture:

Here, John admires the interior of the museum while demonstrating the proper stance for viewing art among many Russians:

You'd never know how much we enjoyed our time in little Sweden, aka the home of cousins Matt & John in Brooklyn, through photographs. So we didn't take any. They promised a changed borough from our last visit in December 2003, and they made good. We had dinner at M. Shanghai, a homey but hip restaurant where everyone sits on benches at three long tables and eats amazing food with Shanghai-region influences. The following morning we walked with the cousins to pick up their community-supported agriculture weekly goodies at a farmer's market that seemed altogether too wholesome to be on the East Coast. We erased the memory of all those leafy greens with Polish breakfast (kielbasa all around). Then we had to say goodbye and embrace the Garden State Parkway.

Once again, the lack of photos of the wedding we attended in Sea Bright, NJ belies the wonderful time we had there.

We spent the waning hours of Sunday afternoon with Stefan, Toddi, Stefan's mom, and newly minted two-year-old Kadence. We liked Kadence a lot better than we like most two-year-olds, mostly because she seems already to have developed a healthy skepticism about the world.



New Jersey is too much fun. We couldn't even stop laughing long enough to have our picture taken: