Open-faced chicken sandwich on English muffin with fries.

I took this photo for the name of the restaurant, but it also serves for sartorial comparison:  If Amanda wants to be a Brooklyn hipster, she’s going to need WAY tighter jeans and WAY brighter sneakers.  Her scarf is a good start, though.

As we brunched, we tried to plan our day.  We had stayed out in Brooklyn on purpose so that we could explore a new part of New York.  But neither of us had had time to make advance plans, and so we started talking about things we’ve done in other cities when we didn’t have plans.  For example, when we were in Paris for Thanksgiving and just spent the entire day walking around eating delicious food . . . .

Planning problem solved! 

Having just finished breakfast, though, we needed a theme to get us started.  Because “fried dough” is never the wrong answer, we charted a course to a bakery called Dough, locally famous for its doughnuts. 

This being Brooklyn, we soon came to a flea market that triggered every “browsing” instinct in Amanda’s soul and, before you could say Little Red Riding Hood, we were off the path to grandmother’s house and into the hipster woods.

Not that there were wolves here.  Just lots of knit caps and flannel shirts and facial hair and tortoiseshell glasses and ironic onesies for babies and t-shirts for adults with dinosaur silk-screen prints and outrageous second-hand clothes and bins full of “repurposed” junk that was called “art” that I would never actually put in my house and all sorts of delicious food that was called “organic” and “artisanal” that I definitely wanted to put in my mouth. 
 

We started with the mini-whoopie pies.

I got the rosemary and olive oil whoopie pie.

What’s this I spy?  FRIED DOUGH!

I got the hibiscus frosting with mystery goop. Mission accomplished.

Asian-inspired organic hot dogs?  Yes please!

Mine on the left — topped with a mango salsa.

Artisanal sodas?  I’ll have a taste, but pour me a cup of that hot cider!

Once we’d eaten our way through the market, we decided we felt chilly (cider notwithstanding) and in the mood for an art museum.  So we headed back towards the Brooklyn Museum of Art, passing fountains and triumphal arches along the way.

Note to Apple:  Your iPhone camera needs to be adjusted so that I can take photos of triumphal arches without having to tilt my phone.

Now, I know I have pioneer ancestors, and I’m all for walking back to Jackson County, Missouri, for the rapture or whatever, but I think we can all admit that life is a lot better when you can buy hot Belgian waffles along the way.

We also saw some period rooms that had been shockingly reworked with site-specific pieces by another contemporary artist. 

There were other exhibits as well, and something that may have been a wedding or a bar mitzvah happening in the central atrium.  But by the time we’d made our way through the period rooms, we were running short on time, and the sugar high was wearing off. 

So we walked back to the hotel through the chilly night (because apparently cabs in New York stay in Manhattan and are virtually impossible to find in Brooklyn) to freshen up, take a nap and buy theatre tickets for our next adventure (Lookingglass Theatre’s The Little Prince, in Chicago in February) before heading out to Williamsburg to find the the mental hospital where we’d be spending the evening . . . .