Downtown walk

Downtown is not a place where we go often. Overall, three things are worth the trip:

1) Century 21, a bargain-hunter’s dream, insanely crowded and inappropriately dubbed ’NYC’s best kept secret’;

2) taking your guest for a walk across the Brooklyn bridge and, despite your husband’s recommendation not to give his visiting friends a lecture on landmark buildings because they don’t give a damn, bring them to the Woolworth building, Customs House, Federal Hall and Trinity Church until they drop;

3) getting married at the City Hall before Carrie does.

This last Saturday at the Financial District was a little different:

- we walked around with a US History PhD student who offered the ammunition to finish off my future guests,

-then we wandered around for an hour or so, looking for a decent place to have a bite. We ended up in a diner where evidently someone is paying off the health inspector. I sat at the sticky counter, asked my waiter what was that bird whistle. It’s the cook, he said, the cook is a bit nuts. All right, as long as he can fix a ceasar salad. Where can I wash my hands? Hmm…. He turns to the other waiter: ¿Dónde está el baño? They start a discussion. Outside, inside, upstairs… They didn’t seem to know. Well, where does the parrot cook wash his claws, then? I passed on the salmonella salad and we left.

-we came across an Italian hole-in-the-wall type of place where the cook and owner was half Italian and everything was fresh and cooked from scratch. A little Italian paradise.

-after lunch we headed over to an electronics expo held in the Winter Garden lobby at the World Financial Center. The expo was disappointing. Moreover, although the Winter Garden is a lovely place, there is always this somber feeling of the sorrow that hangs over the whole area when you look out those $3.5 million new front windows facing the giant hole and agonizing construction.