San Gennaro...

The Festival of San Gennaro was, I have to say, a little disappointing. Nevertheless, I am glad we checked it out. Unfortunately we ate fair food before we realized many of the restaurants opened up sidewalk cafes for the festivities further south...and while the Italian cookies were fantabulous, Maya and I preferred the out of this world rice pudding we found after we sent a tired Jonah home early with Brett.
Highlight: the little old Italian women leaning out of their windows on the 3rd floor watching the hordes of people below. Lowlights: listening to the rude Italian clown in the dunk tank insulting someone's mother or his ability to get it up, in an effort to make them buy more balls with which to dunk. Another Lowlight was the fact that there was all sorts of other greasy fair food from places no where close to Italy on the map.


Hidden in Little Italy were a few gems, though--we found a Crumpler store. They have cool things. And like I said, the rice pudding? Simply amazing. New York is weird this way. Like we weren't looking for rice pudding. and we had already ordered our Three Million Dollar Home from REI (can you say big fat dividend?) But you'll be walking somewhere doing something else and in a little corner there is something extraordinary. Unassuming and just a small part of the street or neighborhood. But really great. And then you wonder what is in every other little nook and cranny in the City, and I guess that is why people stay in New York for years, because there is always another city street to wander along. I still think Little Italy is interesting...I don't mean to pan the festival. I just had visions of coming home with shopping bags full of marinara sauce and fancy olive oil and nice olives and scrumptious pastries. I thought I would be dining on really great spaghetti and drinking red wine and illy coffee with gelato for dessert. Instead, I could have eaten a hot dog and some cotton candy. Or had food from about 20 other countries. The restaurants looked wonderful. Next time I'll just plan to eat at one of those.