10: SOHO

South of Houston Street
(p.s. if you ever visit NY, Houston is pronounced HOW-ston)

"Wow, Charlton Plaza"

We've mentioned before how small most NY parks are. The parks in SOHO are no exception. Charlton Plaza is not much more than a fenced-in strip of dirt along a building. But it took our breath away.

Meg in front of St. Anthony of Padua

SOHO is a huge shopping area. We had a great time stopping into stores and just enjoying the fun window displays. This fur coat store had luxurious furs for both people and Barbies.

Harness Dog on Prince Street might have been Megan's favorite store. It reminded us of our dog-clothes documenting day in Tribeca, only this was much better, because it had one key item of clothing: dog JEANS.

Megan was in love with the dog jeans.
She wanted to marry the dog jeans.

Here she is with leather pants for dogs.

We perused for several minutes, despite the fact that neither of us own dogs, or even know someone who owns a dog. It was that great of a store.

I was this orange bike's biggest fan. It was an advertisement for DKNY. There were lots of fancy stores on this walk like Dolce & Gabbana and Coach. Instead of going into those stores, we stopped into Girl Props.

Megan temporarily lost her mind and bought grape earrings.

And toothpaste earrings! She is ridiculous. It was funny. She plans to wear these earrings while she prepares her Sunday School lessons, for extra inspiration.

Ms. Girl Props herself made a dramatic entrance in the GP zebra vehicle as we were leaving.

We popped into Starbucks to refuel on chocolate covered graham crackers and peppermint hot chocolate. Megan's expression = funny, but the serious motorcycle man hanging out in Starbucks = funnier.

In addition to lots of shopping, there are also many art galleries in SOHO - we saw gowns made of wire and other gowns made of mosaic tiles. We also saw these guys hanging out on top of a pickup truck - and I'm totally blanking on the name of the painting they come from.

My favorite store of the day was The Evolution Store. It was floor-to-ceiling really cool stuff - skeletons, insects, anatomical models, you name it. My favorite item was a pendant that was a real butterfly wing. They were gorgeous.

It is hard to capture the feel of a neighborhood in photos, but we thought SOHO was grand.