Sunday 5 July

Today was a massive day of walking, by far the biggest yet! I swear we must have walked at least 20kms all up.

It was a beautiful day, quite warm, but not overbearing and we started quite early whilst it was still nice.

We ticked off 9 of our walks today accross the Lower East Side, the East Village, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Little Italy and the edge of China Town.

We stopped for lunch at Risotteria, a Gluten free restaurant on Bleeker Street; it was fantastic! We had glutten free anchovy pizz and glutten free chicken panini, with gluten free bread sticks that Phil fell in love with. We had gluten free cheesecake for desert and bought bread sticks, oreo cakes and a black and white cookie to take away.

Mid afternoon we found a lovely little community garden where we sat to catch our breath for a few minutes. It was cool and quiet and had a lovely feel about it.

Late afternoon we ended up at Madison Square Gardens (the garden, not the stadium). This was the original site of Madison Square Gardens, before the stadium was built. Like many of the parks around it had many people, a lot of them female and sunbaking in bikinis, but also a fenced off dog area with lots of dogs running around. There are dogs everywhere in New York, it seems that everyone has one (and many are big dogs) and they go everywhere whith their owners. When they are not in the park, they are in shops, at restaurants and on the subway. Ruby and Maggie would love it here!

Our next stop was Madame Tousades where we saw lots of stars. Used our New York Pass to get in, which was good because I could not have justified paying the $35 entry fee otherwise. We had a sudden realisation this afternoon that we only have another 2 days to use our New York Pass and so we have to get in and see a few more places.

We stopped at Planet Hollywood for dinner, Phil wanted a meal that would fill him up, so that was an obvious choice. From there we headed to the Empire State Building. It was after 10pm when we arrived yet the queues were still ridiculously long. It must have taken about an hour and a half to get up there. Having said that, the view was fantastic. We got to see the view from the top of the rock in the day and the view at the empire at night, the best of both worlds. At 102 floors up, the view was worth the wait!