Labor Day in the West Village

We had the whole day off together and although it was rather dreary out, we decided to spend our day in the city exploring the West Village instead of wasting it inside. We started by following a walking tour and ended by wandering around on our own taking pictures of this and that. My new camera and Flickr (online photo sharing) account will make it even easier to share great pics with you. I can now include slideshows like the one below and you can visit my Flickr link (added under links in the right column) anytime to view full sets of my photography.

One picture in the slideshow below is of a very narrow 75 1/2 Bedford St. The list of former owners and renters reads like a who’s who of New York. There’s the cartoonist William Steig, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, the writer Ann McGover, and supposedly both Cary Grant and John Barrymore spent time there. The home’s most notable resident, and the name etched into the plaque on its facade, is Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. The building is about nine ft wide and stands in an old carriage passageway. For sale and now listed for about 4.5 million.

During all this touring, Jen was becoming a bit irritable due to low blood sugar so we decided to eat at one of the first restaurants we came across. In hindsight it might not have been the best choice. The waitress wasn't friendly, the food took forever and was wrong when it came out. The highlight of lunch was actor Sean William Scott, better known as Stiffler from the American Pie movies, walking his dog right by our table. We ended with a few cups of great coffee at Stumptown in the Ace Hotel, 29th St. and 5th Ave, before scenically bus-ing it through Manhattan, over the 59th St. bridge, and back home to LIC.