Wednesday Morning: The East Village is snazzzy; Katz's Deli

Wednesday morning I explored the East Village. It's actually a pretty small neighborhood but I like its style a lot. Lots of funky restaurants, jewish, ukrainian, moroccan, and a ton of indian on a street called curry hill. Lots of offbeat stores, most of which are too hip for me but still fun to be around and peer into. Some neat places I visited:

* Grace Church. Normally I wouldn't mention another church or historic townhouses or anything like that again, but this was cool for two reasons. One, as I passed they were about to start a pipe organ concert of Bach. I went inside and listened for a while. It's a nice majestic church, beautiful stained glass windows and all. I didn't like the concert much, probably due more to the pipe organ than Bach (but I can't be sure). It also had a striking spire. My guidebook said, "the marble spire replaced a wooden steeple in 1888 amid fears that it might prove too heavy for the church - and it has since developed a distinct lean." Indeed, now there is tons and tons of scaffolding around the whole thing making sure it doesn't lean further while trying to restore it..
* The Merchant House Museum. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday. What is this about me visiting museums when they happen to be closed?
* The cube (big metal thing) in Astor place that was the site of a prank that cracked me up when I read about it last year.
* Saw Tompkins Square, which was much much like Washington Square in the Village in many ways...

Okay, maybe it doesn't sound that great on "paper," but it really is!

After exploring I grabbed food in the nearby Katz's Delicatessen (a famous jewish deli) on the lower east side. A massive pastrami on rye (oh, so much meat, so warm and tender, soooo good) and some pickles and a black cherry soda later, I left a happy man.