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Tuesday was my 34th birthday. Since I’ve never really celebrated with anyone by taking the day off work and going someplace for my birthday, I decided it was high time to do so. Amy poked around on the internet and found a great food and cultural tour of Greenwich Village for us to take. I highly recommend the tour - the guide, Todd, was really knowledgeable and funny, and the food we found was excellent.

We started off by meeting at the Greenwich Village Bistro. Amy got a coffee before the tour started.

Then it was off to Joe’s Pizza, for a slice of New York pizza. Apparently, this the place in the Spiderman movies, and also claims to be Ben Affleck’s favorite.

Next we hit a pastry shop, Rocco’s, for the best cannolli I’ve ever had in my life.

Rocco’s is right next door to Bruno’s. Fortunately, they specialize in different Italian pastries. Rocco’s focuses on southern Italian pastries, seen in this case.

Then we wandered down a side street and found several great little restaurants. Apparently Home Restaurant has the best lunch burgers this side of … someplace! Scuttlebutt has it that the lunch chef is leaving soon (shhhh…) so get yours soon.

Cornelia Street Cafe is very cute and has spoken word and music performances nearly every night for inexpensive. Their beer seemed cheap too, and the bartender was quite nice-looking.

At Faccio’s Italian Specialists, we were treated to deep-friend rice/cheese/ham balls called arancini. It doesn’t sound very appetizing in English, but Oh. My. God. they were good. Amy had two.

Inside Faccio’s were all sorts of canned and bottled Italian goods, as well as more homemade sausages than you can imagine.

Right down from Faccio’s is Aphrodisia. Spices, herbs, potpourri, soaps, smelly things, and more! They distribute chocolates from a local candy-maker. I loved the cinnamon-dusted pecan chocolates so much I had to go back later to buy some for my knitting gals this weekend!

At this point, we began doing some heavier walking. We went to lots of places, saw the “Friends” building (the one they show in the exterior shot), wandered through a speakeasy, noted some architectural details of homes and buildings, and saw the city’s narrowest house (at 9.5 feet wide!) where Edna St. Vincent Millay used to live. But we also walked through the Blue Mill Tavern, and I about died when I saw the great old bar.

Seriously - it’s wonderful!

Next we hit Murray’s Cheeses and ate some fantastic cheeses and olives. Later, I went back and got some of their goat gouda (not goaty at all!) and Italian piave. Amy picked up some really incredible cheddar. Yum. Cheese is life. That is all.

Our next food-tasting happened at a small store-front kebab place. We had falafel and doner kebab. I felt like I was back in Istanbul again, it was that good.

Our last taste of the day came from the other pastry store, Bruno’s. If you go on the tour, you’ll find out all about Bruno and Rocco, and why there are two Italian pastry stores next to one another in Greenwich Village.

But what you really need to know is that their inventory hardly overlaps, and that Bruno’s has amazing tarts. We had an apricot-dream tart that was the perfect way to end the tour.

After the tour, Amy and I did some shopping (coffee and tea from Porto Rico Imports, cheese from Murray’s, chocolates from Aphrodisia), and headed up to Washington Square Park for some sitting and sun. NYU’s graduation was happening two days later, so we have the nice temporary wooden fencing in the background of this photo. Oh well, we had a great day and a wonderful time in NYC!

The train ride home was long, so we stopped as soon as we got back at World Cafe Live Upstairs for dinner. Amy had gnocchi with tomatos, asparagus, and artichoke hearts. She enjoyed it a ton. My chicken taco salad didn’t photograph well, but tasted excellent.

The day was wonderful. It was all I could ask for in a birthday - to be out doing something fun and unusual with an amazing woman. Maggie, however, was less than pleased with us for leaving her to her own devices all day long.

Fortunately, she got over it and all is well in that little beast’s world now.

Last weekend, Amy and I had a Maryland sort of Saturday. We headed out early for the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival, where I saw Jody and Christy, spied the Yarn Harlot, and saw working sheep dogs! It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever seen me with Maggie (or heard me talk about Maggie, or read my writing about Maggie, or looked numerous photos of Maggie) that I enjoyed the sheep herding demo by the dogs more than almost anything else there.

Here is the female, Abbie, doing what border collies do best: looking intense.

And here is the male, Shep, doing the other thing border collies do best: herding sheep.

After watching them, we headed into the vendors areas. I got pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing, but still ended up walking out with $125 worth of yarn (that, bad knitter that I am, I didn’t photograph.) I got some beautiful blue corriedale wool, some coordinating purple corriedale wool, a random skein of Noro Kureyon for a project I’m working on, and some Himalayan wool/silk in soft lime green with multi-colored heather flecks. The corriedales will be worked into a chevron scarf from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, and the wool/silk will end up as a hat and mittens for one Ms. Amy.

After braving the crowds at Tess’ Designer Yarns (and not finding quite what I wanted - although maybe we will go to their place in August on our vacation) and after Amy bought a new wallet, we headed to Baltimore to see the Orioles play the Royals at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. What fun!

We had a lot of fun, eating and being generally rowdy with the other folks in the cheap seats of section 90.

This was our view of the game. The Orioles won. Who can argue with that?

All in all, it was a grand day, and a great start to my birthday week. Next post will be all about our trip to New York City on Tuesday and the great food and cultural tour we took of West Greenwich Village!

Like most east-coast knitters I know, tomorrow I’m headed to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I’m pretty excited, as it’s my first time going and I don’t really know what to expect. Hit the bank today and have $100 cash to spend on yarn and the like.

Amy’s agreed to come with me, on the condition that we leave around 3 and head in to Baltimore and Camden Yards for an Orioles game.

You know, that’s a trade-off I can deal with! Hope you all have a great weekend. My camera batteries are charged and I’m ready for the day. Photos when I return….