Shopping, Shopping, Shopping

Today Juli and Alan were feeling pretty wiped out, so they decided to chill out around Times Square, resting in their room and eating close by. We got back on the Downtown Loop at Times Square to do some shopping outside of the main "touristy" areas.

We got off in Soho (and learned that SoHo stands for South of Houston, and Tribeca stands for the Triangle Below Canal Street) right in front of the Quicksilver store. We headed down the street towards Canal Street stopping in stores that looked interesting.

Canal Street was crazy. When we got there all kinds of people were trying to sell us DVDs of current movies like Superbad and the Simpsons Movie. And of course there were the requisite handbags and watches and all kinds of other toys and things for sale by many, many street vendors. It didn't take Heidi long to start to feel claustrophobic so we quickly headed back the way we came.

We stopped at the Yellow Rat Bastard store which was pretty cool. We saw some neat Paul Frank designs for Sophie but not in her size. The guy at the YRB store directed us to the Paul Frank store, which took us into little Italy. We bought Sophie a monkey hoodie (with monkey ears on the hood) which she absolutely loved and insisted on wearing immediately. Along with her pink converse high-tops she was looking pretty cool.

We also went to Bloomingdales when we got closer to where the bus had let us off. To me it looked like the same stuff that you could buy in other stores in Soho, but just marked up to like $275. In the basement (the men's sections) were some of the GAYEST salesmen and customers that I had ever seen. These guys were flaming. One guy was walking around with a small dog in his little over-the-shoulder bag. Heidi bought herself some beauty supplies from Bloomingdales and left proudly with her little brown bag.

After that we got back on the tour bus and off for a brief stop at the South Street Seaport. We tooled around briefly and checked out the mall that is located there. Then it was back on the tour bus and off again at Rockefeller Plaza. We took a few pictures there and checked out the NBC store. Heidi bought a hat for her father from someone who was raising money for a soup kitchen.

We walked to Macy's from Rockefeller. We had to walk by Bryant Park where fashion week is in full swing. People were waiting outside the entrance to the big tent hoping for a glimpse of someone famous.

Macy's was of course absolutely gigantic, but aside from that, pretty unremarkable. To us it just seemed like a regular department store writ large. Writ very, very large. Also at this point we were getting pretty tired and wanted to head back to the hotel to rest a bit. Sophie had a snack in the hotel room by licking the salt off of potato chips.

For dinner we headed to Junior's which is famous for its cheesecake. The dinner filled us up but of course we all had to have dessert and once again a New York restaurant lived up to its billing. The cheesecake was delicious - creamy, smooth and tasted great. We had to quickly leave so that Juli and Heidi could make it to the Broadway musical Rent which was at 8 o'clock. That left me to put Sophie to bed which was uneventful except for when she bit her tongue while eating an apple.