NYC Markets, episode 5. In which I, too, do not enter the museum.

I'm headed uptown to the GreenFlea, I promise! Just wanted to share another fun photo.  Mari snapped this during one of our favorite outings in Chinatown.  Start with a leisurely and delightfully overwhelming morning at Pearl River Mart (on Broadway between Broome & Grand).  This well-organized, colorfully-jubilant Chinese department store proudly offers quality, imported products for the home and is a mecca for lovers of all things Chinese, especially crafts and decorative goods.  

After a leisurely morning visit, you will need (crave) some nourishment and one of our absolute favorite craveable stops is Jing Fong, about a 10-minute stroll away at Canal & Elizabeth Streets (near the Manhattan Bridge ramp).  Bright and festive any time of the day, any day of the week, Jing Fong offers picture-perfect, flavorfully-fresh, authentic dim sum throughout the day.  (I have not yet been dared to sample the ever-exotic chicken feet!)

Both sites are beautifully

and thoroughly laid out.

pearlriver.com

jingfongny.com

Definitely one of my favorite itineraries for a Friday in New York.

Spending Sunday fleamarketing the GreenFlea in New York is one of life's greatest pleasures (in my humble opinion).  One of my favorite days was spent a few years ago on a wonderfully crisp, sunny Sunday.  Taking a little break from the flea, Mari and I sat on a bench in front of the American Museum of Natural History (across from the GreenFlea on Columbus Avenue at 77th) next to a fellow marketer who was sitting with her little dog and a shopping bag.
Mari and I broke into our just-purchased warm mini quiches (mushroom my favorite, vegetable hers) and sat watching people and enjoying the sun with our savories.

Striking up a conversation with our benchmate, we were mistaken for locals ourselves (one of the best compliments I've ever received!).

With apologies to Fitzgerald

and Nick Carraway, she had

casually conferred on us the freedom of the neighborhood.

As soon as you walk into the GreenFlea from the 77th Street entrance, you will see the quiche, and the olives, and the pickles, and everything else you want to snap up and pack up and bubble wrap and luggage-ship home with your weekend laundry.  Needless to say, we look forward to a quiche treat on Sunday mornings.  But let's begin at the beginning.

The GreenFlea is a great NYC fleamarket even without the "green" aspect.  What makes it green is fresh produce and all matter of fresh-baked goods, organic eggs, artisan cheese, robust jams and jelly, lush herbs, succulent plants and flowers, and hand-crafted soaps and silky lotions and fragrant potions.

These pedestrian acres of the GreenFlea are tent-spread across several blocks in front of the museum and are so very tempting and colorful and fragrant, it makes me long to live in New York once again, but also makes me appreciate our brief visits all the more.

Visit the comprehensive site

greenfleamarkets.com

for loads of information.

Once you make it past the edible temptations at what Mari and I fondly call the "quiche entrance," you will find one of the best and most varied selections of fleamarketable items we have ever seen.  There is furniture (you know how I long to snap up a piece of fleamarketed furniture!) in its natural, vintage condition, as well as vintage furniture that has been refurbished, repainted, or otherwise refreshed.  You will also find troves of once-treasured books and collected magazines waiting to fill a home library or decorating void in a new home.

Here, Mari is mesmerized (as usual) by rows and rows of overflowingly browsable containers that can barely contain their contained contents.  In addition to costume jewelry, there are hand-crafted jewelry items fashioned from cleverly recycled buttons and trinkets with past lives not yet complete.  Mari loves breathing life into old jewelry pieces herself, often transforming little baggies of fleamarketed baubles into majestically brilliant necklaces, earrings, and bracelets with new findings and clasps and her own unique brand of unbridled creativity that magically resuscitates long-forgotten objets d'art.

Sorry to gush.
I'm still crazy in love.

(with thanks to Beyonce and Jay Z for coining a great phrase)

It is wonderfully easy to pass an enjoyably carefree Sunday fleamarketing and savoring (and sampling!) the temptations of The GreenFlea (open from 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM every Sunday).  It is just as easy for me to continue listing everything you will find, but perhaps it's time for a little show-and-tell.  Some special-to-me GreenFleamarketed collectibles rescued via urban archaeology next time.