Ayo and I ventured over to Brooklyn today, since the guys started their day filming someone on that side of town. We were happy to join them on their car ride to save us a bus trip. This Ayomoon day #4 started chilly and wet, so it seemed like the perfect museum day. We were dropped off on a street corner and made our way quite easily to the NY Transit Museum. Naturally, as I spotted the museum, Ayo decided it was an ideal time for a snooze. All those missed daytime naps (at best catnaps on mama) are giving all of us terribly restless nights of sleep. This childhood sleep concept is the most counter-intuitive thing to me: sleep truly begets sleep! So, having temporarily lost my little observant buddy, I had the choice of going into the museum and reading up on all the little facts that Ayo wouldn’t ever let me read, or resting my already sore legs at a coffee-shop. I chose the latter as I too was feeling the strain of today. My phone battery was strangely low, so I couldn’t do anything but sip my coffee, listen to conversations around me and enjoy not having to talk or run after a small human.

When Ayo awoke from his short nap, we went back to the museum location. The Transit Museum is in fact a repurposed, decommissioned but still functioning subway station with a selection of train cars throughout the years that you can [safely] walk in and out of. Someone working there told me that in Nov/Dec a few of the cars are let out of the station for Christmas shopping tours! We ran inside every train car we could before discovering the upper floor featuring NY buses throughout the years. To his delight, Ayo finally got to “drive a bus”. I think the museum will be even more fun in a few years when we all have the luxury of reading the tidbits (or reaching the brake pedal). However, by then, he won’t go free of charge! So, with darting eyes, I tried to take in the signage (fonts, wording, sizes, colors) changing over the years and what the turn-styles looked like back then…one of them said “5 cents to exit”. By this time, Ayo was melting down. He cried and cried until he found a manky banana in my backpack. I knew ribs were touching his back when he was happy to eat the peel as well.

From the museum, old banana in belly, I felt like we might have just enough time to jump inside the ball-pit inside the Thursday special pay-as-you-wish Children’s Museum of the Arts back in Soho (before making our way back to the bus terminal to head back to our accommodation). We trekked back to Manhattan on foot and by subway, only to discover that this museum had closed down over a year ago. Well, thanks, Google!

The huge silver lining in all this was that on our way, we stumbled upon a bakery in front of which a couple was taking photos. We always do that when we find an awesome bakery! 🙂 It turns out, we had found Dominique Ansel’s bakery, also known for his invention of the famous Cronut! Haha! We didn’t get one (according to their website, those $12 pastries are only guaranteed to those who manage to line up prior to 6am, and even then, limited to two per person) but instead enjoyed a gourmet bakery lunch date together. Ayo licked his chops when trying the homemade butternut squash soup. I tested out their other signature pastry: the DKA (Dominque’s Kouign Amann – the chef’s take on the Breton cake). Then, we shared a lychee-coconut pavlova. It was all a little overpriced but really worth the experience. Wearing his bright orange bib with matching bright orange butternut squash on his lips, Ayo unabashedly sat on my lap enjoying the good food. We had chosen the empty table in the center of the sun-room, surrounded by late twenty or thirty year old singles wearing bright lipstick and chatting with their chic friends wearing designer clothes. Perfect!