Deliciousness By The Slice

I know you'd all be surprised to hear that when I discovered there was such a thing as a pizza tour available in New York City, that I was somewhat eager (read as absolutely desperate) to go on it. Today was the day - we went on a pizza tour of Brooklyn with A Slice of Brooklyn tours.

The bus picked us up in Union Square, a part of Manhattan we actually hadn't been before, but we quickly headed out of Manhattan, and into the Borough of Brooklyn for over four hours. (The theme song of Welcome Back Kotter was in my head the whole time, except for the bit when we saw where the opening of Saturday Night Fever was filmed, and I briefly found myself singing along to the BeeGees.)

The theme of the tour was a pizza tour but really the pizza was an excuse to visit Brooklyn and get a history of certain neighbourhoods, including a brief walk on the Coney Island boardwalk. I completely fell in love with Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the sort of place you always see on TV looking rundown or full of gangsters so it was surprising to see beautiful neighbourhoods with mansions or just spacious, pretty, well kept homes and so much greenery. Also so attractive about Brooklyn was the blend of ethnicity there, it felt like the whole world was in the neighbourhood. I'm just smitten.

Oh and did I mention there was pizza?! We tried two different kinds at two famous pizza joints - Grimaldi's and L&B Spumoni Gardens. Grimaldi's specialises in coal fuelled brick oven thin crust pizza and is situated just next to the Brooklyn Bridge. L&B's specialises in Sicilian pizza in the heart of Brooklyn. The pizza at L&B's is a square cut, double baked fluffy crust pizza where the cheese is underneath the tomato paste. I saw it on Man vs Food and didn't see how it would work but it does, it was delicious. So was Grimaldi's. Also cool with Grimaldi's is that there a big lines for it and we got to skip the line *evil laugh*. I probably preferred Grimaldi's but would eat both again.  As in, if someone would like to bring me a slice of either one I'm staying at....

After bring dropped back in a Union Square we started the 40 block trek back to the hotel (blocks are small here, so it was about an hour walk with traffic).  The walk took us down Broadway, past the Flatiron building - Aaron's favourite building in NYC, through the original Madison Square Garden and oh, how coinicidentally, it took us to Macy's. I saw the lost look in Aaron's eyes as he watched me run into the store shrieking in glee. Macy's did not disappoint. They were having a huge clearance sale, and it was a further 25% off on those items today.  *evil laughs again*. I was restrained and bought just three items, including another greatly reduced Ralph Lauren jumper. Honestly to be plus size and be able to buy designer items is just amazing, to be able to buy them for under $30 is beyond stunning.

We ended the evening at Ellen's Stardust Diner. It's a diner near Times Square featuring Broadway hopefuls as the wait staff and in between serving they perform songs. It's a lot of fun, the staff are excellent singers.

We're now back in the hotel room, somehow completely exhausted. Tomorrow is a completely free day, we're not sure where it'll lead us. So talk to you about it tomorrow night!!