We have spent the last couple of days in New Jersey, visiting with Zoya and Vladimir (friends we first met in St Petersburg, Russia in 1992), seeing the last of the Fall Colors, visiting the New York PhotoPro expo, and shopping for last minute items for Iceland.

Today we moved to East Village in New York City, where we will explore for the next week.  Evelyn was last in NYC in 1982 on a trip for Apple, and I was last here in 1968, as a college freshman (the year before I met Evelyn).  We walked the neighborhood around our AirBnb room, and found it to be an amazing, if expensive, area.

We arrived a bit hungry, so went into a tiny sandwich shop (Porchetta) and had a fabulous pork sandwich — which we would have called a hornita in Ecuador. We then discovered an Indian spice shop, where we purchased a dozen spices that we cannot find in Ecuador.  After taking those back to the room (our arms were full), we took a short nap, then went out in search of dinner.

Since our intended restaurant had a half hour waiting time, we dropped around the corner at Eddy’s for a drink and scallop ceviche appetizer. We had never had a cold scallop ceviche before, and the taste was incredible.  We then moved over to UpState, the restaurant we had chosen for dinner (TripAdvisor 5 star rating was definitely deserved).  We sat at the bar, and asked the bartender for a wine recommendation to go with our meal.  He first offered a sparkling white wine, that didn’t quite suite our taste, so he then suggested and let us sample a sauvignon blanc, which we preferred more.  After a generous pouring, he brought out our smoked salmon “share plate,” followed by a scallop main course.  Everything was over-the-top delicious.  Our bartender (Frank) turned out to be from Chile, and we talked briefly (he was kept pretty busy) about South American seafood and culture.

All in all, a very nice reintroduction to New York City.  Now, if only the temperature would rise about 20 degrees and wind stop blowing, this would be a perfect trip! 🙂