It was raining today. And kind of a bit cold. Kind of. That sort of in between weather where you don’t really know what to wear. We didn’t want the rain to deter us, so we donned our waterproof shoes and rain jackets and headed for Brooklyn bridge. We decided we would walk over to the area of Dumbo, because it’s a cool bridge and despite the rain it was actually quite nice walking weather.

We caught the subway a few stops and then walked to the start of the bridge.

We had our first squirrel sighting! Yay! This guy really thought we had snacks for him. We didn’t.

It was pretty busy on the bridge and the rain held off which was nice. Great views. We could even see the Statue of Liberty. Now we know we are in NYC.

Once in Dumbo we looked at some shops and took a photo of the popular view.

It was quite quiet and chilled in Dumbo. When we were here last it was a warm sunny day and a Sunday so it was crazy busy. That said, it was gearing up for some World Cup action later in the day.

Lots of cool views of Manhattan from here. Hard not to take a bazillion photos.

It was nearly lunch time. We gave in a got a Lobster roll from Luke’s Lobster. They are expensive but oh so delicious.

Then we went and had coffee (well I had a matcha) at Arabica because we always like to feel a bit like we are in Japan wherever we are. Also, we went here last time and we like doing the same things.

After coffee we looked at some bookshops, failed to buy anything and then worked out we could walk back over on Manhattan bridge. So that is what we did. It was a bit noisier and grittier on this bridge due to it having a subway that runs across it, but it also had cool views.

It started raining a bit more as we approached the bridge.

The other side of the bridge led us to Chinatown so we wandered through there back to our hotel.

When we crossed the road from Chinatown in to Little Italy, we couldn’t resist going in to this old Italian food shop. We bought a huge ball of freshly made mozzarella and some prosciutto which we decided would be dinner.

Back at the hotel we had a coffee and some cookies that we had bought at Breads Bakery the other day.

We had room dinner because when else would we get the chance to eat that mozzarella.

After dinner we headed down to the East Village to check out a honky tonk bar called Lucinda’s that’s part owned by Lucinda Williams. Tonight was bluegrass jam night.

Super cool little place.

The bluegrass jam started at 8pm and “if you have an instrument and a positive attitude you can join them on stage” sadly I had neither of those things so I wasn’t allowed to join. It didn’t however stop the 16 or so other musicians getting up and giving it their all. Banjos, mandolins, violins, harmonica, guitar, double bass, you name it. It was great. They played through until 11pm with a couple of short breaks in between.

We had a couple of drinks and a fine time. We managed to stay awake too which was pretty amazing. Finally the jet lag is easing…but now we don’t have many days left here.

We walked back to our hotel once the bluegrass was over and snacked on some prosciutto and ricotta.

Good night.