The local greasy spoon, John's Coffee Donut Shop, was pretty full, so we went a few doors down to
The Joint for breakfast this morning. With uncertain wait times at restaurants, we make sure to pack some toys, which these days, means puzzles and our phones. When the double-sided bus puzzle gets boring, we have Sandra Boyton eBooks and YouTube on our phones to keep our son entertained.
Our next stop was Fort Greene Park, where we met a friend with her new baby, and had a picnic lunch under the trees. There was a kids' birthday party going on, and their loot bags must have had bubble guns, because there were thousands of bubbles floating and dancing in the breeze. The food came from
Greene Grape: delicious avocado-cheese sandwiches and for dessert, artisanal Ho-Hos! Gabe was thrilled to just eat an entire chocolate cake for lunch. We gotta do something about this vacation diet.
In the afternoon, naptime wasn't over until almost 16:15, so we rushed to make it in time to
Smorgasburg. This is billed as a "Food Flea Market", and is a pain to get to. The buses take you most of the way there, but there's still a lot of walking to get to the piers. But once there, it was worth it. Imagine a stunning view of Manhattan's skyscrapers, sitting on makeshift seating made of wooden pallets, and forty or fifty food vendors selling everything from pizza to popsicles to Indian street food. With only an hour left to go, many sellers had already started to take down their booths, but I was able to sample:
- Duck dumplings from Brooklyn Wok Shop: nice thin wrappers, generous portions of meat, plus hearty shitake mushrooms
- A passionfruit-mango soda, and a 10-ingredient triple-pork sandwich de chola from Bolivian Llama Party: the sandwich had delicious crunch from the pork cracklings and pickled vegetables, but was too much for me to eat in one sitting.
- Coffee popsicle from People's Pops: Didn't like the coffee grounds they deliberately left at the tip.
- Mexican Hot Chocolate and Lemon Sky ice creams from Ample Hills Creamery: chocolate one was okay, but didn't like the lemon-ginger flavour. Tasted a bit like gingerale.
The prices were a bit steep, but I thought it was worth it for the experience of trying new things. And the venue couldn't be better. Well, it could be, if it were warmer.
After a half hour of running in the nearby playground, it was time to start heading home. We followed our friends along a roadway to Pier 1, where the East River Ferry DUMBO stop was, and waited around until it came. For $4 a ticket, we got to enjoy a nice boat ride along the river all the way up to Greenpoint!
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