NEEEEEEEEEW YORK!

Sean and I arrived safely in New York. We are currently staying at the Jumeirah Essex House, across from the southern part of Central Park. It's awesome in Central Park! Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of it (this time) but I never knew it had all kinds of baseballs diamonds and playground areas and the like. I thought it was like boring, old Queen's Park in Toronto, which is basically just a big patch of grass with the occasional bench. Here's a view of our hotel from Central Park:After sitting down on a huge pile of rocks (I'll try and get a photo of that later during our trip), we headed over to Alice's Tea Cup, but not without going to the wrong end of town. Who knew it was on the West end and not the East end? Not me! I say that my directions are terribly because I am excellent at reading maps. Life has to balance itself out somehow, right?

Anyway, we made it to Alice's with a little bit more walking and wouldn't 'cha know it, it was full of females! Sean turned out to be the only male in the place besides the wait staff--hmmm. After taking a good look at the menu we decided to share "The Mad Hatter" which consisted of two small pots of tea, three scones with preserves and cream, two sandwiches, a dessert and assorted cookies. Needless to say, my eyes were bigger than my stomach. Despite telling Sean that I was ridiculously hungry, which I was at the time since I hadn't eaten breakfast that morning, it was a buttload of food! And it came on three-tiered tray thing. Here's each level:

For the scones we chose banana blackberry, chocolate almond and mixed berries:Those scones don't look that huge but trust me, they're gigantic! Sean and I just happened to pick the types that are made to the biggest. They were so good. I'm still thinking about these scones.

For the sandwiches we chose black forest ham with gruyere on semolina with raisins and fennel (the two latter were actually baked into the bread) and the albacore tuna with cornichons and shallots on semolina with black sesame seeds:The ham sandwich is on the left and the tuna on the right. Sean's peeking out from behind. And I don't know about you but I'm not a big fan of tuna salad sandwiches--they're always a little bit too dry--but this one was delicious! I think it was the mix of cornichons, shallots and whole grain mustard vinaigrette that made it extra delish.

For dessert, we chose the mocha chocolate chip cake to share and had a bunch of assorted cookies:Now I know that's the worst photo of desserts ever, but it was my first attempt at food porn while in New York. It's bound to improve from here--and obviously I didn't take the photos in order, ha!

So far, New York is awesome!