Now, this may have once been a truly Lebanese section, but it is unfortunately now only two or three shops and a few restaurants along Atlantic Avenue. Small as the section is, it's nice, and the stores are great little places, filled with baskets of spices, olives, preserved lemons, strange cooking devices, and jars of all sorts of Lebanese foods. I took the opportunity to buy some olives and preserved lemons, both common ingredients in Moroccan cooking.
While my friends dined on some Lebanese cuisine, I strolled through the neighborhood, gazing upon the beautiful brownstones, the families and children everywhere, the cafes and restaurants. I joined my friends as they finished their meal (I wasn't all that hungry) and had the good luck to be quickly asked to finish off the food that they had been unable to finish. And so I dined gratis on raw and cooked lamb, eggplant soup and stuffed grape leaves.
Leaving the area, and most of our friends, Antonella and I headed off to walk some more and check out the views of Manhattan from under the Brooklyn Bridge. We saw some weird stuff there--a woman in a bra and a see-through shirt seductively posing for a cameraman, as well as some people taking wedding photos.
Now, there is obviously nothing all that strange about taking wedding photographs in such a beautiful place. The sun sets over the skyline, the Brooklyn Bridge rises gloriously above the East River, and the Manhattan Bridge stands just in the background. The weird thing was that the wedding photographer wasn't using the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop, but rather a Coca-Cola machine, a local ice cream parlor, and some cars.
New York is a weird place, but it's nice to be home.
There's a good pizza place down there under the bridge.
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