Today’s journey was to the beautiful little town of Katonah; founded April, 5 1897-well “New Katonah” was founded on that date. The original village was condemned by the city and replaced with a new reservoir.  The people of Old Katonah decided to move their hamlet, buildings and all to a new location.  Roughly fifty-five of Katonah’s original homes, stores and barns were relocated to their current location.

Our first stop was at  Willy Nick’s Restaurant & Bar for brunch. It was a pleasant lively place with a friendly staff.  The food was suprisingly good.  I had scrambled egg whites, with breakfast potatoes, sausage and rye toast, all perfect.  Andrea Sessler was today’s travel companion enjoyed her breakfast food too.

Our next stop was at The Gift Garage. It was one of those stores you find yourself wandering around in every town that’s like this. You know the store that has absolutely nothing that you need but you want to buy stuff anyway.  I found a great book The Slightly Odd United States of America, did I wake up this morning thinking I needed this, not really. 

The town itself is really charming and you can’t help feeling happy wandering around a place like this on one of the first nice days of spring.

The City Library in Katonah

The third part of the trip may have been the most exciting of all though.  As someone who’s lived in Manhattan for twenty two years the freedom to drive wherever I want is an incredible luxury.  You’re never more aware of living a vehicle less existence more than when you’re shopping.  Once you find yourself carrying the maximum load possible, you have to stop shopping.  You can have your purchases delivered to your apartment, that’s true but it’s not always a practical option. 

So shopping at the Katonah A&P with the knowledge I could  buy whatever I  wanted to because I simply had to push the cart to my car, put the packages in the trunk ( that opens and closes automatically by the way) is nothing short of miraculous!  For approximately$150 I bought seven bags of groceries.  At the deli on my corner I would have gotten two. It was a city dwellers food shopping dream come true.

So except for the fact that I locked the doors when I went into the supermarket, but left the sun roof open and that I also left the gas cap open and drove around like that for a few miles before we noticed it, I would say voyage number two was a whopping success!