Tuesday, March 9, 2010

odd little adventures


Tom and I are not ones for the typical. It might surprise you to know that in our many trips to New York we have never been to a play. We may very well be missing out and maybe one day we will go to one, but in the mean time we like our odd little adventures. This time it was the search for Steve's Key Lime Pies.

A little history: several years ago we adopted out a precious little dog, Finnegan, to a wonderful girl named Julie. A couple of years later she and Finnegan moved to NYC to go to law school (Julie, not Finnegan). Hooray for dog owners who move and take their dogs with them!! Anyway, Julie has been a fantastic resource for all things off the beaten path while visiting NYC. This time it was the key lime pie. I don't think she knew that Tom is insane for just about anything key lime. But it was a no brainer that we would go when he heard about it. However, it is not easy to get to. And we are not cab people. To and from the airport, that's it. Subway all the way. But the train gets you no where near Steve's Key Lime Pies. It's in Red Hook, a neighborhood of Brooklyn. Long story short there is a free Ikea shuttle that gets you kinda close to Steve's. So we hopped on the shuttle and pretended to be eager to arrive at Ikea for some unpronounceable furniture. We got off and headed away from Ikea towards a somewhat sketchy looking area along the water. Soon we started to see odd looking, Florida inspired signs about key lime pie. We found it. Notice there are no pictures of the pie itself. Once we got the pie all we did was eat! It was ridiculous. This pie from this place that had no real interior to speak of, at least not for the public, that sold four things: small key lime pie, medium key lime pie, large key lime pie, and key limonade, had a shop dog named Mamey...it was THE best key lime pie either of us had ever had. We ate it on a rickety picnic table looking out over the water on a beautiful, sunny, 55 degree day. It was perfection.
Leaving the heavenly pie place we did not want to ride the shuttle back, it made us both a bit queasy, so we decided to walk to the nearest train. The walk took us through the literal projects in Red Hook. It was yet another area to see and I am always wide eyed and fascinated. It was a pretty long walk and when we found the train I was pooped. We walked up to the platform, an elevated platform, and when we popped out we saw this most fantastic view of the Statue of Liberty (not the best picture, she looked much closer in person, but you get the idea). It was breathtaking. Here we were in this not-so-great area and it had one of the best views of Lady Liberty that I have seen, even from out IN the water. It was one of those serendipitous moments that you could only have on an odd little adventure.