Travel Tip: Don't go to the museum when you could just go to the gift shop.

One such book carried by MoMA

Museums in NYC are huge, exhausting, borderline spiritual experiences. Like the Met, the Museum of Modern Art is huge. Both actually have secondary properties with exhibits because they're so huge. Since we only stayed in NYC for 6 days, I definitely did not have time to hit all of the great art exhibits. Following some great advice from the family friends we were staying with, I elected to skip MoMA and just go to the MoMA design store.

I spent two hours in the store. There is a fantastic mix of MoMA merch, innovative products, and sleek design. My favorite things were probably the children's books. They have a variety of cute and creative introductions to famous works of art through board books. As an art nerd, I love it. There were so many neat products that I wish it weren't so far from home. Some of the dishes and furniture would have been difficult to drag back to my car via the subway...

Since I skipped the full museum, I had enough time to see Grand Central Terminal. You know, the one in all of the movies? It really is that gorgeous in real life. It was crawling with tourists snapping photos when I went, so I limited myself to just a few snap shots. If you visit, I would recommend sticking close to the walls and keeping the photos to a minimum. No one wants to be the tourist that gets between a New Yorker and the door on their way to work.

To round out my tourist-y activities, I made a point to get a pastrami sandwich from Katz' Deli (the one from When Harry Met Sally). I had never had pastrami before (do you know of good pastrami in AR?). It was moist, delicious, and perfectly complimented by the rye and mustard. I ate half of the sandwich and took the other half for lunch the next day (it was still awesome as leftovers).

On one of my non-touristy excursions, Kristina and I explored the Brighton Beach area. The signs nicknamed it "Little Russia by the sea". It's a Russian-Jewish neighborhood right next to Coney Island.When I say "Russian neighborhood", I mean the signs were in Russian, with teeny tiny English translations at the bottom. The karaoke flyers passed out by the promoters on the sidewalk? Also in Russian. With no translations.

We had great Russian food though. We went to a restaurant called the Nargis Cafe. It was basically a cheap Russian bar, but the food was great. Kristina and I split an order of Babaganoush with bread. I ordered an awesome meat pie and Kristina ordered a chicken heart kabob. According to her, it was delicious (I don't do organ meat). We were seated quickly and the restaurant had quite a lot of character for such a cheap menu. The bar in the corner had color changing lights behind the bottles that were really pretty.

After we ate, we went to a neighborhood grocery store to pick up some snacks for the next day. Have you ever seen a grocery store that sells baklava the way Kroger in Conway sells chicken strips? Because it's awesome. There were a variety of Russian cookies and chocolates (and other groceries, but how is that interesting?). I may or may not have bought quite a bit of it to bring home and devour in Arkansas.