The One About The East Village

Every day for the past few weeks I've been faithfully recording the steps I've walked as part of The Global Corporate Challenge (GCC). I know you're supposed to walk 10,000 steps a day as part of a healthy lifestyle and some days I've definitely exceeded that target. But to be honest, my daily average tends to hover around the 8,000 steps mark - not ideal, but still nothing to sniff at really.

Today I accompanied K to the East Village where she had a brunch date, and I had resolved to walk around and give my GCC pedometer a bit of a workout.

My first stop in this healthy dose of fitness was to Butter Lane, the cupcake emporium. I know, I know but bear with me. I redeemed one of my Groupon vouchers, good for six assorted cupcakes. Ordering anything in the US is not my strong suit and the sheer expanse of the frosting/icing menu at Butter Lane was totally overwhelming. So I asked the cashier to just make me a box of her favourite cupcakes and she ended up giving me all manner of toothache-inducing options. Peanut butter & banana; caramel and vanilla; and key lime pie - just to name a few.

Next stop was another calorie-free enterprise, The Chocolate Library. I mean, come on - its name alone blends two of my favourite things in the world. How could I go wrong? Somewhat disappointingly, the store has nothing whatsoever to do with books. But on the chocolate front, the store well and truly delivers. Offering tasty treats and gourmet bars from all over the world, it really was quite hard to choose just one thing. So I chickened out and bought a tasty sampler from the Chicago chocolate company Vosges, oh and then I pinched a couple of samples from the front counter.

All that calorific shopping worked up an appetite, so I called into the second Tuck Shop store on St. Mark's Place. Ice-cold Coopers Pale and a meat pie? Hell yeah! The strong flat white coffee I had afterwards rounded out the lunch perfectly.

By this stage I was feeling completely stuffed and the drizzly rain was showing no sign of letting up. So I crawled from shop to shop on the 30-block walk back home. Coming through the front door I was met by our Super, who was proudly holding aloft a plate of cupcakes that he swore to me were home-made...by him, no less. Stuffing in a vanilla cupcake with delicious chocolate icing, we chatted for a few minutes before I had to excuse myself to come upstairs and lie down.

6,000 steps and the calories to match. Now that's doing the East Village in style!