Rain was forecast today which is always a bit disappointing when you have things to do and places to see.

We decided to take our chances anyway. I had a mission to find some hiking shoes for Iceland.

We visited a nearby Outdoorsy Store – Rei with the hope of finding some. Unfortunately Rei is closing down in a couple of months (disappointing because it’s a great shop – Steve bought shoes there last time we were in town) so stocks were low. I saw a few shoes I liked but the sizes were wrong. Bought some hiking socks instead and left.

We decided just to have a bit of a wander around and maybe head toward a pizza place we were interested in for lunch. Wandered through Little Italy and Chinatown and saw lots of cool buildings and shops and stuff. New York doesn’t really start opening until about 11am or later so it was pretty quiet except for shops and restaurants getting ready for the day.

We saw this cute little cafe and couldn’t resist stopping for a coffee.

Oh I just remembered we had this coffee before we went looking for shoes. But I’m not changing it now so you will just have to imagine.

So after coffee and (failed) shoe shopping we headed towards the aforementioned pizza place. But then we realised it wasn’t open on Monday, so we abandoned that plan and instead headed towards Union Square, because, well just because.

We stopped in to a few shops, including nerd favourite Forbidden Planet.

At Union Square there were some fresh food markets and lots of shops – including a Uniqlo (quick look, didn’t buy anything) and another sports shoe shop. I was successful in purchasing some shoes in there. Hooray!

Then we spotted Breads Bakery. This is the bakery that supplies our hotel with all the delicious pastries we eat everyday. It was basically lunch time so we stopped in for a snack. We wanted to get everything- their products are delicious!

I had a spinach burek and Steve had a potato one. And we got these little strawberry pastry things that I have forgotten what they are called.

More walking, more looking a in shops. Besides a brief downpour, the rain had so far stayed away.

We went to a cute stationary shop called Greenwich Letterpress. I wanted all the things.

By this stage we were near to a different pizza place that we wanted to try. L’Industire pizza. Apparently it’s quite popular. This was confirmed when we got there and there was a line to get in. We waited, it wasn’t too long. Steve got a slice of Burrata pizza and I got the “New Yorker” – pepperoni, sausage and ricotta. And yes, they were really good.

After pizza we had Matcha ice cream at Aoko Matcha. They have different strengths of matcha ice cream. I got #1 and #3. Steve got #2 and Yuzu. Nice ice cream.

The rain was threatening by now, so we headed back to the hotel. Also by now the jet lag was kicking in again and I was exhausted.

We ended up having room dinner and watching television and listening to the rain until we fell asleep.