a weekend outing

Many of you know that Ian and I had planned to take our first non-friends-and-family-related vacation this weekend. Well, mostly -- John's cousin, Ginger, and her husband, Scott, own a B&B upstate, and we decided to visit them and get a change of scenery. Plus, we hear the foliage is gorgeous this time of year.

Anyway, both Ian and I ended up having to work this weekend (even though we'd asked off), so we decided that, rather than fighting with our employers, we'd postpone the trip til mid-November.

Instead of sitting around and moping today, when neither of us has to work, we decided to spend some time at the famous Union Square Greenmarket. It's such a cool place, we thought you might want to get an up-close look. So here we go...on another virtual field trip.

It was a beautiful morning -- albeit a bit chilly (52!) -- and we were both very excited for our trip. Instead of making breakfast here, we decided to try the brunch at a local French place.

I thought the trains weren't running downtown (they do a lot of construction on weekends), so we took a bus. That's rare for us. We hardly ever go places that you can't get to on the train (like the East Side).

The French restaurant, Cafe du Soleil, is on 104th and Broadway. It's adorable and has a great atmosphere, yummy food, and at least one very, very odd waiter. Oh well. We'll go back.

After a quick stop at Barnes & Noble, we got to the farmers' market. It's wrapped around three sides of Union Square. Clearly, the entire populus thought today was a good day to pick up some produce.

And bring their dogs.
Here are just a few of the farmers and their offerings:

Halfway through our visit, we saw some zombies. Yeah. At first we thought they were just a few weirdos celebrating Halloween early, but then we realized that they were actually part of a huge protest against the bailout. I was unaware that zombies use BlackBerrys too. I should have known.

Back to the farmers' market...We bought pears and apples for tarte tatin (tonight's dessert) and kale.

The wildlife who live in Union Square came right up to us (the camera wasn't zoomed in). Right after Ian took this, the squirrel charged us. We think it wanted to nibble on the kale.

After we got away from the squirrel, we stopped at Trader Joe's Wine Shop to stock up. (Unlike Wisconsin, wine and liquor aren't sold in New York grocery stores, so you have to make a special trip to buy it. I'm not sure if it's affected our purchasing trends or not...) This is Bear's Lair Viognier. If you like crisp whites, I highly recommend it. Plus, it only costs about $6.

It turns out that I was wrong about the trains, so we didn't have to take the bus for long. On our way home, we saw this great drummer playing really complicated and fast beats while some kids break-danced. They were great.

It was a very nice trip. We'll take you there on your next visit. But if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make some corn bread to go with the Texas Beef Brisket Chili (with squash!) and kale that we're having for dinner -- with that apple-pear tarte tatin for dessert. How much more autumnal can you get?