As the old lady I chatted with on the bus said, "It's just wonderful!  And we're all in such high spirits!"

I decided to play lady of leisure today.  I first went for a fancy breakfast at Sarabeth's Kitchen on Madison Avenue.  The place gets a mixed review from me - the omelette I had was fine, but nothing special, and the salt grinder (took me a moment to figure out that I had to grind the salt) didn't make much difference.  The coffee was fine, but I would have loved a cafe au lait, and they didn't serve it. (Since the advent of Starbuck's, lots of restaurants now serve such specialty coffees.)  But the orange-apricot marmalade really was delicious.

It was pretty, though - yellow walls, chintz and country furnishings  - but incredibly noisy, as many New York restaurants are.  (Something visitors sometimes have trouble adjusting to.) I didn't see the upstairs until later, or I'd have tried it. The crowd was almost entirely female, with the odd accompanying male, one gay couple, and a few babies.  All the rest were women in expensive t-shirts and jeans, meeting for a leisurely breakfast.

It did have the most amazing bathrooms, though. Single occupancy, and huge. The one I was in had a table of "paper" towels (they felt like real towels), displayed on an old (antique?) sewing table, complete with treadle and wheel.  I remember learning to sew on a manual sewing machine as a child - who would ever have thought such things would become fashionable?

Next I headed for the Guggenheim Museum, only to be reminded of the first rule of museum-going in New York - check the hours first.  Many museums in New York (including the Metropolitan) close on Monday, but the Guggenheim closes on Thursday.  So I went to Central Park (just across Fifth Avenue) instead.

One of my favorite spots in New York is the Reservoir. You know when you see in movies someone jogging on a path next to a fence and a large body of water?  That's the reservoir. It's lovely in the summer (see pictures), but beautiful in an entirely different way in the winter, with shimmering shades of gray and silver - clouds, water, ice and snow, and white seagulls.  Today it was crowded, not just with joggers, but with people just like me, taking advantage of a breathtakingly glorious day to be out and about, and some visitors taking photos.

I strolled down the joggers' path, checked the bridle path for horseback riders (none today), crossed the pretty little bridge at the south end, and headed for the Metropolitan museum instead.  Ultimately, I changed my mind about "museming" today, but here are some of the photos I took.

Speaking of taking photos, I've noticed that when I take photos, I become a tourist.  I see the city through new eyes, but more importantly, people see me as a visitor to the city.  You'd be surprised how many welcoming smiles I get!