Lovely Italian restaurant with a beautiful backyard. I usually have the Orecchiette Salsiccia Broccoli or the spaghetti Vongole.

I love this place. It’s almost always empty. I can think here, and look at the New York City skyline which is amazing and exciting and always inspiring and reminds me of how lucky I am to live here.

The Tenement Museum celebrates the enduring stories that define and strengthen what it means to be American. We share stories of the immigrant and migrant experience through guided tours of our two tenement buildings on Orchard Street and the surrounding neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Visitors can take building tours of the recreated homes of our former residents between the 1860s and the 1980s as well as walking tours of the neighborhood they lived in.

Unlike a lot of neighborhoods the sidewalks in this area are often still paved in the original slate slabs. You can see “extra” pieces sometimes chained up outside like this…. Why pour concrete?

If you're far up in Greenpoint and need caffeine + snack, Bakeri is my spot (I say "bake-ery", others say "bach-ery"—I still vote the former). Known for their baked goods—both savory and sweet—it's the perfect spot for a coffee meeting, small breakfast, or a solo book read. There's one large communal table in the center, plus a few two-tops and decent counter space—one of the rare cafes with enough room that it's rarely packed (except saturday!).