The NYC Experience: The Big Onion

The foresight of pretense is very nearly obsolete in its trendiness.
~Random Quote Generator

It was a rainy, windy day. Still beautiful - but a day you want to be cozy and curl up with a good book. So we slept in, enjoyed coffee and chatted until about 11:30 when we hit the street to have lunch and to head down to the Village for a historical walking tour from Big Onion.

I was so looking forward to learning more history and walking through more parts of Greenwich Village... and... It was OK. Our little tour guide was probably the most pretentious girl I've ever encountered. She mentioned continually that she was a PhD student at Princeton in Comparative Literature, BUT - she still made the 2 1/2 hour commute from Brooklyn because she cannot BEAR to part with New York City.

She was super knowledgeable and we did learn a lot, but she made it very clear that she was quite a bit smarter than us and that we were lucky to have her there to educate us! So lucky - we, the rag-tag group of uninformed and uneducated tourists!! Here's an example:

Tour Guide: Has anyone ever heard of O'Henry?
(1 second later)
Tour Guide with knowing look on her face: No?
Me: Yes, I've heard of him.
Tour Guide surprised and shocked: Really? What have you read? Probably not the Leaves.
(does she think I'm lying? Is this a quiz)
Me: Most of his short stories.
Tour Guide - still kind of shocked: Ohhhhhh - wonderful (Fake smile)

KILL ME!

One of the first churches built in the village.
On Hudson St - which used to be the edge of
the Hudson River (pre landfills)

Ok - so I'll stop complaining about her and tell you about the cool things that we learned on our tour: Greenwich Village was mostly farmland in the time of the Revolutionary War and shortly after. Most people lived farther south where the financial district is now, but as that became more populated and there was an outbreak of cholera - those with means moved north to the Village to escape.

By the late 1800s many of the homes there today were built up along with horse stables, roads, shops, etc. As it got more crowded, those with means moved farther north and in the early 1900s it became a hot bed for artists, playwrights and the bohemian culture began. As soon as Prohibition hit, the speakeasies were everywhere! There was literally a speakeasy on every street - if not more than one.

Washington Sq park

The neighborhood became the first neighborhood in New York City (along with Brooklyn Heights) to become a historical neighborhood which has really preserved the look and feel of the area.

We saw - the house where Aaron Burr lived at the time he was Vice President and killed Alexander Hamilton. We saw a penthouse where Eleanor Roosevelt lived. The first farmhouse (still wood) that is still standing, the oldest play house in the city, Marie's Crisis Cafe which was run by a very famous and flamboyant woman back in the day, but is still open. It's in the house where Thomas Paine lived at the end of his life. The tour ended at Washington Square Park and NYU campus which I'd never seen on foot before - so that was very cool.

Pen aisle!

I was also on the lookout for stationery stores and we found a few really cool ones. A card store that designs and prints their own cards and another shop that had a whole aisle of pens. SO SO SO HAPPY!

After the tour we walked over the Bleeker St to visit Rocco's pastierre and O&Co so Kathy could experience the best in olive oils and balsamic vinegars. We asked the O&Co guy for a restaurant recommendation and he told us about Le Gigot (which was also recommended by our food tour guy). A French Bistro that was lovely in every way - ambience, people, food. It was most fabulous!!