A Manhattan Love Story | Day 5

Day 5 was our "You've Got Mail" day!  We explored the Upper West Side and celebrated a few of the filming locations from one of my favorite movies.

We started with brunch at Cafe Lalo.

The meal was great, atmosphere was comfy and we met a little boy and his mom who totally stole our hearts. 

We bought cheese at Zabar's "This is a cash only line."

Bought coffee at "their" Starbucks "Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino."

Snapped pics of Gray's Papaya and tried to find the spot where they meet at the end of the movie in Central Park.  But we never did because we were distracted by other stores, street book sellers, and these weird sculptures in a children's park...

I mean, what are they?  Llamas? Sheep? Camels?  No idea.  But we decided to play for a bit anyway...

I found my perfect New York souvenir while we wandered too...

After a full afternoon of walking around we headed back to Midtown with the intent of exploring the New York Public Library's central branch... you know, the famous one.  But first we happened to wander by...

And Hannah and I both had another, "holy shit, New York!" moment.  We wandered around the halls of the New York Times offices a bit and then continued on to the library.

I have to be honest, as cool as it was to be at the NYPL, it wasn't what I was expecting.  It was PACKED with tourists and the librarians wouldn't let me into many of the reading rooms or areas with actual library materials because I didn't have a library card.  I'm definitely going to have to check it out during my next visit when it's not such a touristy time.  I was OVER the tourists by this point in our trip and found a corner to sit in while Hannah explored.

I think part of my problem was that we had walked about 9 miles by this point in our day and I was getting hangry.  So we found food and headed to our next night of theater antics... Drunk Shakespeare.

Now this was fun.  Macbeth with drunk actors, updated scripts, vulgarity, lewd behavior and a dash of iambic pentameter... pure awesome.  

On the way home I spotted my favorite literary name and paused for a quick pic.

Best I can factor I spent about 90 seconds geeking out over Peter Pan and taking a picture.  It would be about 2 minutes later I would discover Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka entering their apartment with their puppies after an evening walk.

That's right.  Had I not stopped to be silly about Peter Pan, I would have encountered Neil and David 90 seconds earlier and had the chance to actually say "hello" to them.

Fucking Peter Pan.