Today, I wanted to share with you my bonus (real life) OBT. For Beloved’s birthday, we went on a mini vacation/staycation/eating adventure in Manhattan. We walked everywhere. And then walked some more. In fact, we walked 11+ miles over the last two days.

Yesterday, we wandered around Le District near the WTC, had Herself’s birthday dinner at L’Artusi, our current favorite spot in the West Village, then walked around Greenwich Village and the NYU campus to work off dinner. Last night, we stayed at the mostly-lovely Sohotel (Pros: gorgeous, quirky public spaces, spectacular staff, good price, clean hotel, excellent bed. Cons: couple on other side of very thin wall trying to break some kind of sexual record, undersized, underwhelming, ugly room in somewhat poor repair).Today, we ate and drank our way across Soho in the morning, then hit Eataly for  lunch at Manzo followed by gourmet food shopping. We came home with bags and bags of fantastic fancy foodstuffs, and a couple of great-looking bags, too! (Backpack for beloved, and spring purse for me.)

During our travels, we saw some really amazing street art (including Tristan Eaton’s work) and some wonderful architecture, and I’ve put the pictures up on Flickr, so go check them out!