Tuesday 30 June

Today we did A LOT of walking. A trip to Borders in April saw us purchase a box of 50 cards, each with a walk somewhere in New York. Today we thought we would start with 3 walks that would give us a chance to see abit of the city. Walk number one for the day was through part of Harlem. We were able to start just a short way from our apartment, so made our way there by foot; this gave us the first good insight into the neighbourhood in which we are staying. As we were awake at 5:30am (I know, me, up beofre 6am!) we were on our way by 7am. As nothing much seems to happen in the US until 10am, the first few hours were quiet and relaxed.

Our walk around Harlem took us through Strivers Row where the first wealthy African Americans built their homes. These are still lovely areas and the architecture is beautiful. There are lovely little churches dotted all over the place as well. We also walked past the Apollo theatre. This is where the Jackson 5 had great success and so with the passing of Michael last week it has been a popular place for people to congregate this week. There are plenty of street vendors around selling t-shirts, posters , dvds etc with Michael Jackson on it. It is amazing how quickly all this stuff can be produced. There was a special Michael Jackson event at the Apollo this afternoon and so the street was already barricaded by police, fans were lining up and the street was full of tv trucks. Someone was filming as we walked past, so it is very likely we were on tv somewhere in the world today.

Our second walk took us through Central Park. My biggest suprise was that there are roads (with lots of traffic) through Central Park. We walked thrugh strawberry fields and saw the John Lennon memorial as well as the place he was killed. We also so the Bethesda Fountain and the Boat House, which we recognised from a number of films. We saw Poets Walk, the music stage, the sheep paddock and even had a swing in the playground (the rules dictate adults without a child present can not enter - does Phil count?). By this time it was about 9:30am and places were still not open so we stopped for some morning tea in a little cafe that made awesome smoothies - even with soy milk for Phil!

Our third walk took us through Times Square. I must say I didn't 'get it' at first, what was the big deal? However, by the time mid-afternoon rolled around and the tourists made their way out, the place was buzzing. There are people soliciting for business on every corner, selling everything from bus rides to food and even hair cuts. It didn't take long to get the hang of walking by and not taking a brouchure. We were sold to by one guy offering cheap tickets to a comedy club as well as some drink deals at a nearby Irish pub. We will use the tickets one night later in the week, but we did enjoy some drinks at the pub over lunch. It was a big meal, and not particularly cheap, but with left over stir fry in the fridge for dinner we didn't mind too much.

As we had finished our walks for the day (and thankfully so, I was struggling by this point) we thought we would take a tour. There are tour buses everywhere, but we decided on a duck tour. It was a lot cheaper as it was not a hop-on hop-off tour, which was fine as I just wanted to see a bit more of the city. The exciting part about it was that the bus turns into a boat and so the second half of the tour is on the Hudson where you get a good view of the city from a distance. It was good fun.

We were home early this evening but just in time as the thunder, lightening and torrential rain began literally 2 mins after we walked through the door. They have had 10 inches of rain this month!! As you can imagine, it is much greener than Adelaide. The weather today was quite oppressive with about 29 degrees and incredibly high humidity. The rain was a relief as it helped cool the apartment down a fraction. Any breeze is a god send as there is no air conditioning or even a fan in here, and as the temperature doesn't drop much below 20 over night, it doesn't get much of a chance to cool down.

I had some issues trying to get the internet connection to work, which may have lead to an imprompute nap. By the end of the night though I had it working and we were able to check in on emails and update facebook. We were also able to do some searching for other things we can do this week.