The 7 mile urban hike including two failed missions enroute - NaBloPoMo Day 21

Tom and I set out at the crack of like 2pm with a mission to urban hike to the NY Transit Museum gift shop in FiDi (otherwise known as the Financial District). FiDi is way down at the bottom of Manhattan where there are many many tourists right about now and many many people in safety vests who work for the Statue of Liberty ferries trying to sell tickets to said tourists. While it slowed us down some, this factoid is completely irrelevant to the point of this post, so let's move on.

Tom and I set out and almost immediately, I made a mental note which I subsequently announced to my hiking companion. I was totally starving because turns out, I forgot about lunch. Also it was really hot out and people were running by in spaghetti strap tops and the more I thought about a glass of water the more imperative it became to not get a heatstroke and pass out. 

So we swooped into the Wintergarden and had a great lunch on the second floor in the food hall. After that, we resumed our hike because we are intrepid and can overcome adversity. We made it to the NY Transit gift shop and. 

It was closed. 

It's not open on weekends. 

Are you kidding me?

So that was Fail #1. In case you were wondering about the why with the NY Transit Gift Shop, I'd tell you that I thought it might be a mecca of possible Christmas gifts. One of them I kinda thought might be an excellent option was this Metro Card tote bag that Wire Cutter had featured:

How can you go wrong with a MetroCard tote bag?

I was intrigued by the possibility of picking it up for maybe my neice who may or may not like tote bags. (The probably correct move is to just give a wad of cash but I'm resisting this option for some reason that likely serves no one including myself.) Anyway, I was thinking that a MetroCard tote bag could be kind of ironic and also functional. 

In the good news department, I did catch a glimpse of the MetroCard tote bag through the window which I had pressed my face up against in my five stages of "WTF do you believe this place is actually closed on the weekends?" 

The glimpse I caught clarified that the MetroCard tote bag is more of a large tote-ish handbag than an actual tote bag. It's also maybe shinier than I'd thought. So. I think it's a no go. I will not be purchasing the MetroCard tote bag. At least I got that out of the trip down there.

Subsequent to not going to the NY Transit Museum gift shop, we marched uptown on the way to Cafe Cluny. I had told Anna that I'd check why she couldn't make a reservation next Sunday, because she wanted to go there for brunch. Anna had said she couldn't make a reservation "all day" and while I was aware you can't make reservations for brunch, it concerned me the "all day" part. Like maybe they're closed for a private party or something.

I told Tom we needed to turn onto Bank Street. This was a dumb idea. We ended up marching right past Cafe Cluny as it was not actually on Bank Street and then we had to circle back around. When we got there (finally) I asked the hostess if they are closed next Sunday and she is truly baffled. She says no reservations before four but after that, yeah.

I finally figure out that when Anna said "no reservations all DAY" she meant "all DAY." Like they did have reservations in the evening. 

So. I'm going to say that this second stopover also was less than productive, although it did straighten out the miscommunication. So. Yeah. Maybe the hike was more productive than originally assessed.

Oh, and we also saw this sculpture:

hmm.

It's down by the oculus.