Mayberry AKA Mount Airy

Mount Airy is the birthplace of Andy Griffith, they like to bill themselves and the "real" Mayberry. 

The show wasn't filmed there, there is nothing "authentic" there except Andy Griffith's birth home, which you can rent out to stay in for your vacation.  (I would really like to meet people that choose to stay in Andy Griffith's house for their honeymoon, I think they would be very nice people.)  There is an Andy Griffith Museum, and a Andy Griffith playhouse.  Other than that, things are rather opportunistic. 

You have a barbershop, why not name it Floyd's?

Or build a garage the looks like Goober Pyle's...

 And while you are at it build a courthouse next door...

Then you can get some old cars and paint them up like patrol cars and give people tours. 

It was fun to drive through the town and see the sites, for us, for our kids, they only vaguely knew what we were talking about.  It makes me wonder how much longer will even this tenuous fame mean anything.

Hunger Games District 12

 

As we were driving home from South Carolina, we stopped to see Henry River Mill Village in North Carolina.  It is an old abandoned Appalachian mountain town that is conveniently located off of I-40.  And it is also the filming location for The Hunger Games.

 

  

Here is the Mellark Bakery

What is cool about this town is that it is not a set, it was a real town.

 

 They offer tours, but I think we had much more fun just going around exploring on our own.

A Whole Other World

So we went to Darlington an old track in South Carolina for a race weekend.
51 weeks a year, Darlington is a small rural town, and its only interest in that it is the seat of Darlington County.  One week a year, the NASCAR circus comes and turns Darlington into something else.  As my son said, "Going to a race is like going to another world, but the world moves around to different places".  So here is a bit of an introduction to this fun, diverse, unique world that is a race weekend.

The Track seats 60,000 people, and that doesn't include people that camp in the infield and outside, exhibitors, officials and race teams.  Everyone converges on one town from Thursday to Sunday ready for the show.

 Allegiances in order: America, the South and NASCAR. 

 

These 5 semis transport the broadcast trucks for Speed TV.  They don't broadcast the race, just pre and post race programming.  Fox, who broadcasts the race, has 16. 

Before you get to the track is the midway where exhibitors have displays.  Restaurants, food companies, insurance companies, military branches, ministries, and anything else you can think of have displays with games, announcers, give aways, or just really cool displays.

After hours on the midway, it is time to go inside.  The national anthem, a prayer and 4 F-16's later

Someone yells "Drivers start your engines.  43 cars with 750 horsepower make the grandstands vibrate under your feet.

 

The power as the cars take the track is overwhelming, the entire crowd of over 60,000 are on their feet waiting for the green flag to drop.

 

Darlington is unique on the circuit.  To go fast, the cars run right up next to the outer wall.

 The cars in this shot are blurry because they run around the track around 130 miles per hour, meaning they circle the track in 30 seconds.  The closer to the wall they go, the faster they can go.  When that doesn't work the cars scrape the wall, leaving what is called the "Darlington Stripe" 

 Then the sun sets and the lights come on. Eventually the laps tick down and the race is over.

The whole show packs up onto trucks and goes on to the next track, 39 times a year.

I had a conversation with a man today about Egypt.  He was a troubleshooter for a multinational food company.  He had gone to Egypt because the company was having trouble getting a new pita bread factory opened.  There were problems with infrastructure and equipment and many other little things. 
While he was there, the superintendant of the factory said he wanted to show him something.  They drove just a couple of blocks and stopped on a street corner.  There a man with a huge bowl of dough was rolling out pita bread.  The two men weighed a few pieces of dough, and saw that the pieces were completely uniform.  The superintendant said, "This man works 18 hours without stopping, then rests for three days, then does it all again." 
They went back to the factory and got it running.
The troubleshooter said he was there just long enough to get the factory running, then went home. "It will break down after I am half an hour out of the country but I finally got it running". 

Guess what this is.

Looks like a stair case doesn't it?  But it is actually the interior of the Red Pyramid in Dashur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pyramid

Here is another view.

The writing on the right side of the picture is graffiti (probably candle smoke from the 1800's) on the inside.  The pyramids at Giza were amazing, but overall, I enjoyed our visit to Dashur more. The pyramid is imposing and more grand looking on the landscape, and the interior is this awesome corbled vault. It was less crowded: at Giza there were a couple hundred tourists and double that many people trying to sell us things.  Here there were a few other people and, oddly, only one person trying to sell anything, and he was asleep.  (That happened a lot during Ramadan). It was also a fun place to go, driving over the Egyptian country side and seeing the villages and farms.  The only downside was the smell, which was worse than the  NYC subway.  

Somewhere I want to go - Day 5

Somewhere I have never been but would love to go: 
I Love Barbecue.  Living in the south for sometime I learned to recognize places to get good barbecue, (more about that later) and heard about the world of competitive barbecue.  Sometimes the food network has competitive barbecuers on TV and it looks like so much fun.  They have giant elaborate grills and smokers on trailers, so they can travel to different barbecue competitions around the country.  Inside the rigs are large unmarked jars of spice rubs, whose recipe they guard with zeal.  At the competition, they tend the fires with all the care of a steam train fire man, watching for hot spots and flare ups.  The smell of burning wood and slow cooking meat must be amazing.
Writing this, I looked up barbecue competitions, and there are many more than I ever imagined.  I think I will be doing this soon.

My Rules for Finding Good Barbecue:
1. If it is a chain with more than 3 locations, or if those locations are more than 200 miles apart: -50
2. If the location is in a strip mall: -20
3. If the building has an indoor seating -10
4. Add 5 points for each of the following that is missing; Public bathroom, doors, windows, floor.
5. If the location is a guy in a trailer with a picnic table outside +25
6. If the trailer is next to the interstate -5
7. If you are given a printed menu -10
8. If the menu has more than 10 things on it -10
9. If the menu has fish -10 or vegetarian dishes -50
10. If most of the signs are written in magic marker and taped somewhere +10
11. If the cook is also the person that takes your order +10
12. If the cook is related to the person that takes your order +8
13. If there are utensils -5, if they are not plastic -10
14. If the food is served on anything that has to be washed -10
15. If there are other people eating there who the cook has known for more than 20 years +15
16. Add 5 points if you are in a state that was part of the Confederacy

Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park

Colorado is just about as land-locked as a state gets. So our trip to Washington was the first time our kids got to see the ocean or a beach.  The idea of high tide and low tide was totally new to us.  We found out the tides are more extreme at full and new moon, and we were there in between.  Still, for people totally unfamiliar the the ocean and tides at all, it was a whole new world.  We spent most of our time at Olympic on the beach, I would love to go back and hike more in the interior.

Random Picture

I have thousands of pictures, so I thought today I would select a random picture and post it, then write the story.  This is a replica of one of the ships that Columbus sailed to the Americas.  These ships were doing a tour up the east coast and we went out and saw them when they stopped in Florida.  I forget which of the ships this one is.  Something that we learned upon going to see the ship:  You see in all the movies people "swabbing the deck".  I always thought that it was becaue of the sea water and wind and stuff the deck got wet so people always had to mop it up so people didn't slip.  The truth is, the deck is designed to stay wet.  The deck is swabbed not to get the water off, but to evenly distribute the water over the whole deck so the boards stay wet. 
They are still touring, if you are interested: http://www.thenina.com/schedule.htm

Day 2 The Pinewood Derby

Last night was the Pinewood Derby.  The car turned out great, yesterday's problem with the paint job wasn't a problem because DS already had a cool paint job planned.  He painted it like lanes on a track, complete with brown strips for the infield.  On the front the painted the word "WIN" and on the back "Start".  I loved the design.  Every boy raced four times, once in each lane.  After winning the first race by a long way, the car feel behind.  Sadly, before the last race, there were some technical issues, they were repaired, but the car lost a lot of speed.  The scouts all had a fun time.  The funnest they had was after everything was over and the boys lined up across the gym from eachother and rolled their cars back and forth between them. 

Just for Fun...Day 1

I was writing my menu for the next three days.  (Yes I only do three days at a time, I hate making up menus so I have to keep the job short or I don't do it.  That is why we have seven pizza boxes in our garbage right now. and a birthday party)  And I looked up the blog of someone that blogged about cooking in her crock pot once a day for a year.   And it made me wonder if I could do a blog every day for a year.  So here goes...day 1.

Today is the pinewood derby, we haven't done anything on his car until last night except shaping.  Last night we added weights and today we were painting it.  It is a really cool shiny black with gold flecks.  Except I wanted to put it outside to dry, and it was raining, so I grabbed an old aluminum pan to prop over it to keep off the rain.  Except the pan had ashes in it.  I got ashes all over the wet paint of the pinewood derby car, and today is the big day.  I'm such an idiot.

So what is on the menu?
BBQ roast beef sandwiches (potluck for derby)
Macaroni and Cheese
Tamale Pie (crock pot from the website)

In the beginning...

And now....maybe the end...If I don't get interrupted again.

At least we know what the booming is.  But we still don't know where we are. 
Then another realization: the lights in the distance aren't in the distance, and they are lightning bugs.  Meanwhile, me calling for help is making the kids uneasy, so I stop doing that.  Did I mention that for the last hour the girls have been singing songs to keep up their spirits and keep the bears away?

In fact, staying loud enough to make sure the bears knew to keep away was a big focus for us. 

Since we had come to the end of a trail, but what we were on kind of looked like a trail, we decided to back track until we were sure we were on a real trail.  We back up a few yards until we came to a set of steps that were hewn into the rock.  That we were sure was on the right trail, but we couldn't find any other way to go forward than the dead-end trail we had already been on.  So we all got together and disscussed our options, which really at that point there was only one.  Spend the night in the woods.  It was about 10:30 (we told time by taking a picture with my camera, then seeing what the time stamp on it was, but we didn't want to run the camera out of batteries since it was our only light and time source, cell phones were long dead).  I knew that it was light at home before 5:00, and we were north of that now, so hopefully we wouldn't be spending more than 6-7 more hours in the dark, hopefully less. 

The next thing was to find a place to spend the night (never would the term "sleep" apply to anyone but the youngest).  We decided to hike up the trail, in hopes that if someone did come by they could help us.  (No big hope there, we had seen a total of 2 groups on this trail the whole way down, and that was during the day).  After just a few minutes we saw a lovely ditch by the side of the trail.  We weren't picky, but this did have the one advantage that we could sit in it and not have our backs exposed, which kept us warmer, and made us feel safer. 

Now that we had our lodgings picked out, we ate about half of the food we had left, (pudding and pretzels) and made arrangements for the night.  This involved all of us snuggling together as closely as possible to keep warm.  (I had been very cold in my tent and sleeping bag the night before, so I was worried about warmth).  Did I mention how rocky the trail was?  Good.  The ditch was rocky too. 

So we got all snuggled down, and started singing songs to keep the bears away. I sang Ian's favorite lullaby to him, then started on my other go-to lullaby which goes like this: "Oh do you remember a long time ago/there were two little babes whose names I don't know/ they strayed far away on a bright summer day/and were lost in the woods I heard people say/ And when it was night how great was their fright/bright sun went down and the moon gave no light/The sighed and they sighed and the bitterly cried and the poor little babes they laid down and died/"  Anyway it goes on, but luckily, after the first note I realized that perhaps in this particular instance, this song would not be as comforting as normal.

Then we heard rustiling in the bushes across the trail, very very close.  I had my camera in my hand, so if we needed to we could fire the flash at whatever-it-was if it came to close, or at least take a picture of the bear that ate us for posterity.  We all heard it, but everyone pretended we didn't and we didn't know that the others had heard it until we talked about it the next morning.

So the night went like this...3 full renditions start to finish of 99 bottles of (root) beer on the wall and any other song that the whole family knew by heart.  Every half an hour the people on the outside of the pile would be cold and the people on the inside would be warmer but sick of sitting on rocks: so everyone would switch places into some new arrangement that we all hoped would keep us warm and keep us from sitting with sharp rocks poking into anything too sensitive. 

We discovered that our oldest has bionic ears, and could hear any noise and pinpoint its direction much sooner than the rest of us, I swear she heard beetles walking on leaves 300 feet away.    Looking up through the trees we could see the sky more full of stars that were brighter than I have ever seen.  This was good, since we could see the stars it meant it wasn't going to rain. 

About three o'clock the stars started to fade, half an hour later, we could see the shapes of bushes in front of us and decided to get up.  We stood around for a while huddling to get warm, stretching out sore limbs and backs and eating half of the food we had left, and sharing a bottle of water.  Around 4 o'clock it was light enough to clearly see the trail, and we started the hike down. 

I guess the end will have to come later.

Well, I guess I'll finish now...

Sorry, I haven't really been eating for the last 2 months.  I thought I'd post our Egypt pictures here, but then I realized I hadn't finished talking about THIS adventure, so here is the rest of it.

.......So it is dark, we have 2 miles to go when we have been going less than 1 mile per hour (in daylight) and there are weird booming noises in the distance.  (Is that where I was?)  We decided to keep going because really what do we have better to do?  We are picking our way along the trail when the trail ends.  That's it, there are trees on three sides of us and the trail behind us.  This is serious now because lost is not good.  We see a light shining in the distance so I call to it.  "HELLO!   HELLO!   WE NEED HELP!  HELLO!"  No response.  I see another light and try again.  Again no response.
 We are still hearing booming noises, and we are hoping that people aren't hunting at night...that wouldn't happen right?  People wouldn't go hunting at night with guns would they?  But it might be different because its a holiday weekend.  WAIT!  It IS a holiday weekend, specifically the 4th of July weekend.  We are hearing fireworks!!!  This helps us in two ways.  1. We know what the scary booming noises are.  2. We at least know that big fireworks are probably coming from civilization so we are pointed in the right direction.

Happy 4th of July Weekend

So, our plan for the 4th of July weekend went something like this...
Leave Thursday afternoon, and drive up to White River Junction, Vermont and spend the night.
Friday do a little sightseeing, do a little hiking.  Drive to our campsite in White Mountain National Forest.
Saturday, do a good hike.
Sunday, relax, see if we can find a church, maybe do an easy hike.
Monday, hike a little, spend a little time in the local town's 4th of July celebration.
Tuesday.  Drive home.

My aunt used to say the purpose of a plan is to know what you aren't going to be doing. 

Thursday and Friday were great, we stopped at one of my favorite places, Augustus Saint-Gauden's Studio, the King Arthur Flour Bakery, and a Rockefeller manison with an interior designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. 

On Saturday, after consulting a a hiking book, we found a trail with lots of waterfalls, in fact, two trails.  There was a small loop, that was 2.5 miles and 5 waterfalls, or what was called a "Grand Tour" that was 8.5 miles and more than 12 waterfalls.  The kids were told we hadn't decided which we were going to do, but they would all recieve a "Grand Reward" if we did the 8.5 mile loop.  And we told our youngest that we would carry him whenever he needed it. 
10:00  We started  in just over two miles of pretty easy hiking we saw three nice waterfalls. 
1 mile We stop at a waterfall and discuss our options.  There were several trails we could take, and the idea was thrown out there that our path only takes us 0.6 miles from the summit of the mountain, what about hiking to the top?
2 miles, we have seen 3 waterfalls when we notice a trail that takes us up a shorter route to the top, we check the map, (we had a great, detailed topographic map) and it seems to be about the steepness of the trail we were on (rather steep, but not brutally so), we decide to climb to the top, and then follow a parallel trail down, still being able 5 or so waterfalls.  Also, the battery of my cell phone, that we were using as a timepiece dies.  We have no way of telling the time.
3 miles  The trail gets tough, definitely steeper, and rocky so we have to pick our way around and over the boulders. Occasionally it is so steep that there are wooden ladders bolted to the rock.
3.8 miles We hit tree line (I didn't know the Appalachians had a tree line but they do.)  The terrain becomes a giant boulder field and we slowly pick our way around and over boulders, the major climbing is over, but it is VERY slow going.  I hear another group mention that it is 5:30.  I'm worried about time, and weather. 
4.6 miles  (elevation 5300 ft)  We have gained 4100 ft elevation.  We are at an intersection called "thunderstom junction"  there are a few clouds, but nothing big enough for rain,  watching the skies carefully.  At this intersection we can go another 0.3 miles to the summit, we can turn around, or we can go on our planned trail down.  No one wants to go to summit, we are worried about time, so we dub a nearby cairn the top of our mountain, take pictures next to it, and turn on the Appalachain Trail to hike a mile to the other trail.  This will lessen our total distance above treeline, which is brutal hiking, and we are still hopeful to see some waterfalls.  We also have no desire to go back down the trail we just came up
5.0 miles The trail is starting to get a little better, there are some stairs and flatter areas built in.  The going is faster, and we are finally going downhill.
5.6 miles We come to our trail junction where there is a cabin for AT hikers, we listen to them happily eating dinner in a big dining room.  Just as we pass, someone shouts "did everyone have a nice dinner?"  We don't know the time, but are worried if they have already finished dinner.  We have been eating as we hike, chocolate bars, pretzels, raisins and reese's pieces.  It is 0.4 miles to the next trail marker.  But we are starting to descend below tree line.  We have 3.7 miles to go.
3.2 miles to go.  It takes us forever to get to the trail marker, we are below tree line but the trail is still strewn with boulders and we have to pick our way down.  Tough, slow going.  The kids are more sure of their footing and are ahead, but Doug and I have to pick our way more carefully.
2.9 miles We passed the trail marker, still slow, still rocky.  We asses our water, and find that we have 4 bottles left.  The day is cooling off so we aren't so sweaty, we ration 1 bottle per mile. On the way, we ask a passing hiker the time, he says it is 7:45, about an hour until sunset. He looks worried for us. If we could hike at our regular speed, we could make it (barely) before dark, but it is rocky, and kind of steep, so still slow going.
2.5 miles  The sun sets, we pick our way as quickly as we can, but as it gets darker, the going gets slower.  We are desperatly looking for a trail marker at 2.2 miles.   We see something that might be a trail marker but it is too dark to make out.   Brilliant daughter suggets "Why don't you take a picture of it?" 
  This is fantastic idea.  I take the camera out, and start to take a picture, and a red light shines (I think it is something to do with the flash).  If I depress the button just right, the red light will stay on.  So we hike with the aid of this light, when we need less, we use the light from the view screen.
2.2 miles  Next trail marker is not for another 1.2 miles, so it will be a long time before we have confirmation we are on the right track, it is quite dark, but the rocks are bright white, so we can navigate, using the camera light for the tricky parts.  We make sure that all the kids have visible clothing on and stay close together.
2.0 miles  It is completely dark, the camera light is the only way we can navigate.  I light up a section of trail using the red light on the camera, and everyone comes down, then I walk 5 feet ahead and do it again.  We are all disconcerted by a repeated noise in the distance (booming? roaring? engine noise?)
More to come going to eat....

Frustration

So, finally the community college I'm going to got around to posting the class schedule for next semester.  Registration starts on Thursday.  And, well, for every class I need there is only one section offered, and it is in the evening.  Which means, if I took the classes I needed, I will be gone from home 4 nights a week.  Not good.  In fact, that is unacceptable.  So what do I do...

1. take fewer classes so I'm only gone 2 nights a week, but then almost guarantee that I won't graduate while I'm in New Jersey, and so have to transfer again (5 different schools instead of 4 but hey, who is counting)?
2. not take any classes and, I don't know, stay at home, or get a job during the day?
3. Try at this late time to get accepted to a 4 year college?  (Theoretically could be done, but application deadlines are very close, and the three that are close by, Rutgers, NJIT, and Ramapo are all pretty competitive).  Also way more expensive.
4.  Take classes that I don't really need for my major during the day.
5. Go ahead and take all the classes, no one really needs me at home during the week at all anyway.

I'm just really in a complaining mood.  I know that finishing my degree is hard, it has always been hard, I just don't know why it has to keep getting harder and harder.
I'm just so frustrated.

What is it?

So Adena and I went to go clothes shopping, but the mall was packed, not a parking space anywhere, and bumper-to-bumper traffic in and out. So we didn't even bother to go in.  On the way home we decided to stop at an antique shop in the town next to ours that we had seen many times, but was always closed.  After tearing ourselves away from the very tempting set of the complete works of Mark Twain (make an offer) published in 1899, we were greeted by the two ladies that had owned the shop for years.  They said hello, then half to us and half to eachother debated whether or not our presence meant that they should get up.  We assured them that they were fine where they were, we were just looking.  The shop had typical antique shop stuff, linens, glassware, a few pieces of old furniture.  But Adena found a few tin boxes she liked, and I found something wonderful.  It was labled "what is it, but it's old $25". 

The ladies in the store said that they had found it in the attic of the building when they bought the shop.  The attic is crammed with stuff, and they just take some of it out once in a while and put it in the shop.  I am now the proud owner of the "what is it".

Be careful what you wish for...

You know the old story about the couple that was given three wishes then the squandered them on stupid things, and ended up with nothing?

Well on Monday, Christine and I were driving around a packed parking lot, could not find a space anywhere.  Christine mentioned something that she wished for, and I replied.  "I just wish I could find a parking space!"  I turn a corner and bam! there is a parking space near the front of the store right in front of me.  Ever since then, no matter where I go, no matter how busy the parking lot, I have been able to find one in the first two rows.  Yesterday at the busy grocery store, on the street in front of the butcher shop, picking up Ian from preschool.  Great parking no matter where I go. 

I tried to immediately wish for gold bars, but so far, nothing.

Museums

We only have 2-3 years here, and so much to see, so we really need to get to it.  Doug got a little bonus this week, which ended up being just enough to buy a membership to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History.  Now we can go for a year for free!  (Well not free, parking is $30 at least and it costs $8 to cross the bridge into the city, and believe it or not, that is the cheapest way to get to the city). 

The Museum in mind boggling just in its size.  Really it is bigger than I can comprehend.  It has more room dedicated to stairways than many museums have in total square footage. 

The museum has this terrific map for children, so we told Ian to point to something he wanted to see and we would go find it.
We first went to Egyptian wing to see some mummies, Ian was relieved that they didn't really wake up and wander around moaning, but did think that he wouldn't like to be around when they got resurrected. 

Then he picked a Rembrandt portrait on the totally other side of the museum.  On the way we came across this terrific painting.  Isn't that charming?

Then he picked the Greek wing, and we realized he was just picking the thing furthest from where we were, anyway I had to override him because on the way to the paintings I caught a glimpse of this:

The gold statue in the center is by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and the archway on the right is designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.  Had to go there.

On very few occasion something is so overwhelmingly beautiful I literally get weak in the knees.  I just sat on the edge of the fountain in the picture just to take it in. 

Here's a close up of the pillars

We spent all day between this museum and the museum of natural history, and just scratched the surface.  Can't wait to go back.

So I'm finally updating....

After watering the lawn, making breakfast, checking facebook, emailing people, checking all the blogs on google reader and playing 3 different computer games, my house is STILL full of cardboard boxes, so clearly I need to update my blog.  Maybe that will do the trick.  If not I will have to resort to UNPACKING which would be pretty tragic. 

So we live in a small town, which we love. I usually think of living in a small town as a town in the middle of fields or mountains with nothing around it.  This small town is surrounded by lots of other small towns and beyond that is NYC. 

Something I really love about our house is that there is a church a block away with a bell tower that chimes every hour.  How cool is that?

 Just down the street is a nice library, it is smallish, but has a nice collection and the kids can easily walk to it.

We are also two blocks away from the the elementary and middle school, which is nice.

So far we have only met one of our neighbors, but waved at a lot of people walking by.  There are always people walking by, which means either that people walk A LOT in this neighborhood (even at midnight) or that people are just walking by to check out the new neighbors.

Sorry about no pictures, but I bought the wrong size batteries for my camera.

So I was taking a nap today...

And I wake up and Doug is home, at about 4:30, which is pretty early. 

He asks what time we had lunch

I said 1 o'clock. 

He says, well I was thinking about an early dinner in Hoboken. 

Hoboken, why Hoboken? 

So we can go for dessert afterward.

So we drive about 20 minutes to Hoboken and go to Grimaldi's pizza.  I love good pizza, shortly after Adena was born we go pizza at a place called DeLoretto's in Salt Lake city, and I loved it.  There was a pizza place in Florida we loved too, but nothing holds a candle to this pizza.  The crust was thin but doughy, the sauce actually tasted like tomatoes, and the cheese was white and thick.  It was amazing.

We had about a 7 block walk to Carlo's, the bakery on "Cake Boss".  We got there about 6:00 and the line streched down the block and into the next block.  After half an hour later, we were giddy because we got to cross the street!  Another half and hour and we realized that the parking meter was going to run out, so Doug ran back to give it more quarters.  By about 7:15 we were finally allowed into the store and given a number.  The smell of the store was amazing.  Almost as good as our house smells after one of Doug's baking days.  Every once in a while, some other delicious smell would come wafting through.

The cases are filled with cakes, trays and trays of cookies, and a case in the corner holds the custom cakes people have ordered.  Today there was one that was 4 layers with the NYC skyline on it.  It was amazing.

So we don't want to go overboard, so we only bought:

A Chocolate Buttercream cake

3 Cannoli, A red velvet cup cake and 2 dozen cookies.

Here's the cool thing; this guy could charge anything he wanted for this stuff, people are waiting for and hour every day to get into his shop, but for all of that it was less than $50, which I think is pretty reasonable.

So how was it?  The texture was velvety, the frosting was creamy and chocolatey, with lighter and milder chocolate flavor on the outside and a darker chocolate frosting in the middle.  Yeah, it was good.

Just one more note,  the people that worked there had to deal with a crazy busy shop all day long, and they were so friendly patient and helpful, it really made the whole thing so nice.