Monday 13 July

We left New York this morning, and a very early morning it was! We were on a 7am flight, which sounded very reasonable when I booked it because it gave us almost a whole day in San Francisco. However, who was to know it was nearly a 2 hour trip from Harlem to JFK, which meant leaving at 4am!! And we all know that Phil and I aren't big fans of early mornings.

Sad but true, after a 6 hour flight, we arrived in San Francisco, booked into the hotel and spent the rest of the day sleeping and enjoying the comfort of the hotel room that was missed in our lovely but rather bare apartment in New York.

So nothing to report today!

Sunday 12 July

We did have every intention to make it to a gospel church service, but just didn't get to it. Today was our last day in New York and there were still a whole list of things we wanted to do.

Our first priority was to find Trent's jumper (no, we hadn't got that yet), which we accomplished quite quickly. We also went on an extensive hunt for a smart pen but to no avail (sorry Mum). Then we hit the souvenir stores.

Our second point of business was to make our way down to Coney Island. There were thousands upon thousands of people there, but we really didn't see the appeal. Many of the attractions have closed, presumably hit by the financial crisis, and much of the area was run down and dirty. It probably wasn't worth the long train trip, but at least we can say we did it.

We then made our way back to Brooklyn, with 3 walks in hand of course. We found a lovely litte cafe for lunch and spent a little while watching the world go by. We decided that Brooklyn Heights was the most appealing area we found and that would be our choice if we ever lived in New York. Our walks finished up at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, which we walked accross to take us back to Manhattan.

We made our way back to Maddison Square Gardens where we found a nice little cafe called The Stage Door, which had an extensive and very reasonably priced menu. We stopped here for dinner before making our way home to pack and have an early (or not so early) night.

Saturday 11 July

No photos today, too busy shopping!

I read about an outlet shopping mall called Woodly Commons which has about 200 shops. They are name brand stores including Coach, Nike, Armani, etc but they are the old stock etc that are sold at discounted price. Unfortunately a $600 handbag marked down to $250 is still out of my price range!!

Because it is heavily marketed to tourists there are a number of options to catch a coach there and back; given that that was $42 each we decided to take the train for half the price.

The train took us an hour and a bit out of New York, through some lovely areas with lots of hills and forests. We arrived in Herriman with the knowledge that we could catch a cab. Low and behold there were some taxis waiting for the tourists but it was an interesting scene as the train station is a small platform in a large carpark surrounded by thickly forested hills. There was not a house or business in sight! We had also missed the opportunity to get cash out and found out that we had spent our last bit on chips on the train last night. So we were in the middle of no where, with no cash, taxis that didn't take credit card and no idea which way we were heading.

We declined an offer of squishing into the boot of a hatch back that already had 6 other people in it and waited for another offer. We finally got ourselves a lovely young taxi driver who was willing to stop at an ATM on the way and had enough room for us to have our own seat.

The shopping was good, but with so many stores I needed double the time and ten times the money. We did manage to get some bargains though. I found a handbag and 3 pairs of shoes and Phil got the best deal of the day with new footy boots for $20, needles to say he bought 2!

Friday 10 July

We spent today in Washington DC. Washington is an easy 3 hour train journey from New York, which made for a long but enjoyable day. We had to be on the train by 6:05am, luckily we made it in time, but it was very close!

Given our lack of time in the Nation's Capital, we decided to do the 'hop on hop off' option that is most popular with tourists everywhere we go. We got to see all of the main sites, however briefly, including The White House, The Capital Building and a multitude of memorials. Our tour even took us out to Arlington to see the largest military cemetary in the country and also the resting place of JFK.

Walking the memorials was nice, reminiscent of a Simpson's episode too but none of the Presidents found the time to speak to us. We particularly like the World War II memorial which was spectacularly done. It is lucky they have some spare space because a number of the memorials are real estate hungry.

We ended the day with another National Treasure photo moment, namely the replica of the liberty bell outside the train station. Following a recommendation from our View friends, Joe and Allan, we had dinner at the Thunder Grill, which was very nice.

Thursday 9 July

Today we were determined to be at ABC even earlier to get good standby tickets for The View. Despite being there the earliest time yet (7:45am) we were still 27 and 28 in line. The saving grace was that there are 2 tapings today. So we went back out for breakfast (Strawberry and banana crepes were awesome), some shopping at Barnes and Noble and rejoined the queue at about 9:30.

Again they didn't let anyone in from the standby line and things weren't looking good. We decided to stay in line this time, where we had a pleasant 2 hours with fellow standby people, Joe and Allan from Arizona and Beverly from Canada. We had a great time chatting and just passing the time.

For the second taping they eventually let in a few people from the standby line. When they got to us only 3 could go in, Allan and Joe were ahead of us so they went first, at this point I said goodby to Phil (with only a brief second thought) and headed in. Some batting of eye lids - from Joe, Allan and myself, saw Phil and Beverly join us fairly promptly.

The taping of the show was fantastic. It was a lot more relaxed than Letterman but we still had to give a huge effort to clapping, laughing and cheering, we were even allowed to woo hoo here! The ladies were really great and chatted to the audience during the ad breaks. Phil even got to ask Elizabeth for some recommendations for good gluten free restaurants.

It was 2:30pm before we got away from the studios. We headed off to try and find the elusive grey 25 Yankees jersey for Trent. No luck, but we did find a great little sports bar for a very late (4pm) lunch before heading home for a quiet evening.

Wednesday 8 July

Another good day today. We lined up for The View again today, and even though we managed numbers 12 and 13 in the stand by queue we were not in luck as they didn't let any extra people in.

From there we headed into Tkts, which is where you can get cheap tickets for Broadway. We decided on tickets for Chicago as we couldn't get tickets to our first choice of Wicked. After that we headed up to Central Park to the Delacourte Theatre to try and get tickets to Shakepeare in the Park, Twelfth Night. This is an all star cast including Ann Hathaway. The show starts at 8pm, but even by 11am the line was a mile and a half long, so that was the end of that experiment.

We settled instead for a ride on the caroselle. The lesson here, I might think I would like to go horse riding by I should get over my irrational fear of the somewhat stationary, much smaller, plastic kind first.

We saw the matinee performance of Chicago and it was fantastic. I loved the dancing, Phil loved the costumes, so a good afternoon was had by all.

After that we thought we would try our luck with the lottery for cheap seats at Wicked, but no joy so we had an early night instead with the promise of yet another early morning tomorrow.

Tuesday 7 July

Today was the last day we had to use our New York passes so it was a big day we had lined up. This morning we headed out early to see Ms Liberty herself. We got tickets for the ferry and then joined the queue of course. Security everywhere is amazingly tight, and this was no different.

It never fails to amaze me how many people Americans are willing to shove into one small space. The ferry ride is only quite short and we got our first good look at the statue. Would you believe that we ended up on the same ferry as twin boys who finished Year 12 at PAC last year? They got all shocked and coy when we went to say hello.

The island itself wasn't particularly exciting. We were not prepared to line up for half the morning to climb up inside so we did the tour around the island, took a few pictures and got back on the ferry.

The next stop was Ellis Island. This is where the immigrants were processed upon arrival to the United stated back in the ninteenth and early twentieth centuries. The museum in what was the main buliding and it is quite extensive. It takes you through the stories of many immigrants and their experiences of arriving in America. Not all stories had the happiest of endings either.

Upon arriving back on Manhattan we walked through Battery Park and up to Ground Zero. The space is large and the gap in the skyline is significant. Building on the two main towers is progressing with the holes almost filled to ground level. A couple of other buildings that came down during 911 have already been rebuilt.

We then continued though to find the Wall Street bull (which isn't on Wall Street) but couldn't get a good picture for all the people that were all over it constantly. We were hoping for a down fall of rain just so we could get a good shot.

We then headed up the island to the Intrepid, Air, Sea and Space museum. This museum was built around the war ship the Intrepid. It also has a large collection of war planes and helicopters, a Concord that you can walk through and a submarine (although we didn't get to this before the museum closed).

Continuing on with our nautical theme for the day we went on a 2 hour sunset cruise around the bottom half of Manhattan. This was great, with an excellent tour guide who had lots of really good information and described things so well even I could find them on the skyline! It was a great way to finish up the day.

Monday 6 July

So today began our trials of trying to get on tv. Phil would like to see David Letterman after missing out when he was here with Rick in 2006 and I would like to see a taping of The View.

Standby tickets for The View are released between 8 and 10am each day of taping, so we headed there first. We got there at about 8:15 and were given the numbers 31 and 32 and told to come back in an hour and a half. We headed off to find some breakfast and do another 2 walks (or course). Unfortunately only about 12 people from the stadby line got in so the lesson learned was to be here earlier next time.

Next we headed to Times Square to find out about Letterman. There was some issue with the fact that we didn't have a US contact number, but we got around that, had an interview and left with instructions to call later in the day to find out if we could get in.

We decided to head over to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as it was fairly close and thought we should do something cultural. There were lots of interesting things to see including a display of all the wordly possessions of an elderly Chinese lady, collected by her son, a living art work where a guy was marking the height and name of visitors with black marker around the four walls of a white room. There were also some famous pieces by artists including Picasso, Matisse and Van Gough.

A phone call to the Letterman people confirmed we had tickets for the afternoon taping which would be Friday's show, so we had a few more hours to burn.

Our next stop was to the Radio City concert hall. We got to do a backstage tour, and this was awesome. People will mostly know of Radio City for the Christmas season concerts that are held there each year featuring the Rockettes. The features of this theatre are amazing, from the multi platform stage to the sunset lighting, the interior apartment for the guy that originally built the place and especially the restrooms. We even got to have our photo taken with a Rockette.

After a quick trip home to get change we headed back to the Ed Sullivan Theatre for the taping of Letterman. This involved a lot of standing in line again and lots of practice cheering (with no woohooing aloud). It was really strange to be seeing a show taped, especially what goes on behind the scenes. The band were fantastic and play through every ad break.

Phil was in his element! You could not wipe the smile off his face. The guests for the show were Rainn Wilson from The Office and Transformers a comedian and also the band Maxwell. It was a really good show and we really enjoyed the experience.

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!

Saturday 4 July

Well today was the 4th of July, and to be honest I was a little disappointed; it wasn't as big as I thought it would be. I had images of it being quite over the top; people dressed in red white and blue, 4th of July stuff being sold everywhere etc, but it was really quite sedate!

We started off the morning quite slowly with a trip to the laundromat accross the road - it is a busy place!

We decided that today would be a good day to see a baseball game. I think we made a good choice to go with Yankees (as opposed to Mets) for a number of reasons. Firstly the Mets are playing terribly and loosing most of their games. Secondly, being in Harlem, we are only 2 stops on the train (about 7 mins) from Yankee Stadium, which is just accross the river in The Bronx.

Yankee stadium is huge, but a great design, as Trent told us, there is no bad seat. We had to queue for about 25 minutes to get tickets, but there were plenty available. This meant that we missed both anthems (They were playing the Blue Jays from Toronto, so the Canadian anthem was played also) but there were screens up in the ticket booth anyway. In the end I think we only missed about 5 mins of play, and nothing much happened.

Our first stop of course was to get a hot dog, as you do at the baseball. Apparantly New York hotdogs are the smallest in the world, they measured about 20 cm and are roughly half the size of the hotdog you would get at say Wendy's in Australia. They did of course cost US$5.50 each though. We soon discovered that the $30 we brought for food for the afternoon was not going to last very long at all!

We were sitting at the back of the third tier (in the disabled section as it happens, which had really comfy chairs). As the levels are virtually on top of each other, although you are high, you are still close to the ground, unlike a football field in Australia where you would be quite a distance from the ground. The view was great and the threat of balls and bats flying toward us much less - a good thing if you know how much I day dream, let alone how uncoordinated I am. :o)

The game was really good, it took a while to get into it and work out what was happening but once we did it was good fun. There were about 46 000 people there, which is a good effort since it was about the 4th day in a row that they had played. Can you imagine Crows fans filling a stadium 4 days running? Port can't even manage it for one game!

Normally a game finishes in about 9 innnings; however, the game was tied at this point so they had to play out to the 12th before the Yankees finally pulled ahead to grab a 6-5 win. This meant the game was quite long and people started to leave after the 9th innings. By the end only about half were left to see the win (So they really are a lot like Crows fans).

We headed home for a bit of a rest after being out in the fresh air and sunshine for so long. It wore Phil out so much that it was only the smell of pasta cooking in the kitchen that woke him up. At about 7:30pm we headed in to central Manhattan to find a spot to watch the Macy's 4th of July fireworks.

There were so many people it was incredible! You could barely move as the crowds were so thick. We got off the subway at one end of the stretch that they said was good for viewing. Unfortunately they had already shut off entry to the river side area so we couldn't get down there. Instead we walked with a few hundred thousand others about 20 blocks until we found a good spot along the road, with no buildings in fron of us. At least this meant that we only had to wait about 25 minutes before the show started at 9:20pm.

The show went for about half an hour and it was spectacular. There were 6 sets of firework displays all along the Hudson River, each exactly the same as the other, so it meant that everyone got to see a good view of th same thing. we could see all 6 sets from where we were standing, so that looked amazing. The sound was incredible also.

Getting home again was another nightmare of course as once all those people got in, they also wanted to get out. And whilst we all arrived over a matter of hours, we all left at the same time - crazy. We picked the largest, closest street as our escape route. It would have been 4 lanes wide with large footpaths either side and it was still shoulder to shoulder. Then we had to try and get on a train!

Friday 3 July

After a late night at the Comedy Strip last night it was a slow morning today. After stumbling out of bed we decided on trying out a gluten free American pancakes mix. Cooking these in a casserole dish rather than a fry pan was challenging and they really didn't look pretty, but they didn't taste too bad by the time they were smothered in maple syrup.

We decided to check out the Natural History Museum for the afternoon. We got there just after midday and decided to start from the bottom an head up towards the top floors. We saw some great exibits, especially in the areas of Earth sciences, lots of great rocks! I even found a great mineral sample that looks just like snot and is named after my brother. ;o)

We enjoyed the first level so much (we spent 4 hours there) that we had to rush through the other 3 floors. I took a toilet break and got disoriented while Phil went to find the T-Rex, by the time I found him (only about 5 minutes) they were kicking us out of the museum as it was closing. Unfortunately that meant Phil didn't get his photo taken with the T-Rex, but at least he got to see it.

After a walk through Central Park to find the Delacorte Theatre and find that Shakespeare tickets were sold out, we headed home for an early night.

Thursday 2 July

Today was a day of much walking, rain, memorials and churches.

We started the morning in the Tribeca area which is apparantly one of the most exclusive areas in which to reside. The Tribeca grill is one restaurant in the area and is owned by Robert De Nero.

As our walk took us into the Financial District we came to our first memorial for the day. This is a memorial to the African American people as an extensive burial area is now covered by the financial district. The memorial is only a few years old and was a peaceful adn reflective spot amidst a very busy area. One interesting fact was that the world map created on the floor of the memorial did not have Australia on it - so not really a 'world' map. The second memorial came later in the day and was the Vietnam memorial also in the Financial District toward South Port.

During the morning we also visited the Bodies exhibition. This is an exhibition of all real bodies and body parts where you can examine every part of the human body. It was amazing and we really enjoyed it.

It rained a lot today. New York had 10 inches of rain in June, amazing; I am sure that must be close to what we got in all of 2008 at home. Amidst the rain we still managed to see much of the Financial District, including City Hall, the court houses and the Stock Exchange. Sadly, the stock exchange is no longer open to the public, and like many areas is closely guarded by a strong contingent of security.

So churches... we saw two today, another feature from the movie National Treasure, Trinity church and also St Paul's, which is just down the road from the World Trade Centre and was a hub of support for the community following 9.11. The entire church is now a memorial to the rescue workers in particular, with photographs, displays, messages and more located throughout the interior and exterior of the building. This is also one of the oldest buildings in manhattan and has a charming cemetary attached.

Following this we ended up at the Staten Island Ferry port and so we decided to catch the ferry accross. This gave us a good view of the Statue of Liberty, despite the dreary conditions. Given the rain and the fact that it was late in the day, we didn't stay to look at any of the attractions on the island, but returned to Manhattan.

With the rain setting in we decided it was a good chance to head home to get changed and have a night out a the Comedy Strip. This was over on the East Side and was not a bad show. There were about 5 professional comedians who have had spots on various shows such as Saturday Night Live. The evening was hoted by comedian Ray Ellin. Unfortunately no one mentioned that the amateurs were about to start; however this happened at about 10:30, last call for drinks was at about 10:00 and it didn't finally finish up until after midnight. Most of the audience left by this time, but being compulisve attenders and sitting right up the front, we did not feel that we could leave.

All in all a good, but very long day and we did not get to bed until after 2am.

Wednesday 1 July

Well no sign of any jet lag left today, we stumbled out of bed around half past seven. Another big day of walking today though, knocking off another 7 of our walking cards. We started with a relaxing walk through Bryant Park, where a big screen is set up to show movies through the summer, we walked around the corner and found the State Library. This is another beautiful building, ably protected by her big cement lions, Fortitude and Patience. Of course there was a display of the Declaration of Independence in honor of Independence Day this coming Saturday. The Declaration was first published as a broadsheet for distribution amongst the population, the other copy (as seen in National Treasure) was not created until afterwards.

After the library we headed for Grand Central Station, where we admired the ceiling and took a walk through the market place. From there we checked out the Chrysler Building, another with an ornate ceiling. The foyer was as far as we got so we kept moving up Lexington Avenue to the United Nations. Lunch was in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, named for the second UN Secretary General, my panini was really good, but Phil's mini hamburgers left somthing to be desired.

The UN builidng was good. We did not get on a tour as it was a bit pricey and a long wait. Instead we checked out the public access floors where there was a display of women in the UN on active duty, tributes to UN officers killed on duty, an awesome photographic collection of animals from Africa and the Arctic, various shops and the reflection room.

From the UN, we had a change of pace, heading for Rockerfeller Center. Our tickets got us up to the 'top of the rock' and the view was incredible. This gave a great perspective of Manhattan, the sheer number of buildings and the size of Central Park. We also took a tour of NBC, sitting in the studios of Saturday Night Live and the Jimmy Fallon Show. There are actually a number of our favourite shows produced by NBC and we never knew it!

From here we took a walk up 5th Ave. I must admit I did buy, but restrained myself to a Disney pin and tea towel from the Disney store (all though I was tempted by the US$1300 Pooh print). We also took a look in FAO schwarz where Phil found himself another smurf for the collection. By this time it was getting late and we kept being ejected from places as they were closing so he headed back down to Columbus Circle. We managed 2 for 1 here, doing some shopping and catching the subway all in one building - awesome.

A late dinner of Nachos back at home was great before falling into bed late again.

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.

Monday June 29

Arrived in New York at 7:30 this morning, a half hour ahead of schedule. We were a little worried that we would have to occupy ourselves for a few hours as we wouldn't have access to our apartment until midday; however, we rang and were told we could get in when we arrived. Having done some research we decided that the best and cheapest way to reach our accommodation was via train. Working out the details gave us our first introduction to what we have found to be a bit of a theme; people working at service desks etc are not particularly friendly, animated or informative, but the general public are fantastic and eager to help whenever we so much as look like we might have a question.

With some help we worked out how and where to catch the Airtrain to get us to the subway for the A train and how to use the automatated metro ticket machines. The 14 day pass was not cheap, but we are convinced we will get good value from it.

We are staying in a privately rented apartment between 147th and 148th street on St Nicholas Ave. This is in Sugar Hill in Harlem. We knew going in that this would be a bit of a risk; however, the owner assured us that we would love it. I must say I had my reservations at first, especially given the steep flights of stairs (both in the subway station and the apartment building), and the unattractive appearance from the front. Within a few days though we have become very used to it. The inside is great; it has one bedroom, with walk in closet, a small bathroom with a generously sized shower, a good sized lounge area with cable tv and a kitchen with new (and somewhate oversized) appliances. It is very comfortable and allows us to make ourselves at home much more than in a hotel.

Next door to us in a fish and chip shop, a few doors down in a Chinese restaurant. Across the street is a supermarket, a pharmacy and a laundromat. The subway is literaly 50m from our front door. This is all very convenient and makes for a safe trip home in the evening. The local population is primarily, but not entirely, African American, there are also what appear to be a significant number of students around. Whilst our street is not the prettiest, there are some lovley homes in surrounding streets and a beautiful park up the road. The area is also fairly quiet, espeically in the evening, which is a change from the constant noise further down in Manhattan.

After arriving at our appartment we were particularly excited to shower and I must admit, we did crawl into bed and sleep for a few hours. We got up in time to visit the supermarket accross the street and cook up a stir fry for dinner. The local produce is nothing like we are used to, I think we are spoilt in Australia with such good quality food.

Very little was achieved today, so there are no photos, but we do feel much better for the rest!

Sunday 28 June (2)

So we landed in San Franncisco bright and early at 10am on Sunday morning, yes this was our second Sunday! Got through border security and customs really quickly, firstly due to flying on an American carrier which meant most people were citizens and so the visitors queue was only short, secondly we had nothing to declare at customs this time given that we wern't trying to get 2kg of Vegemite into the country (glad you are still enjoying it Mark)!

The plane ride had given me some time to finally have a look in the San Francisco guide to find out what might be on offer for the day as we had about 13 hours to kill before flying out again. Low and behold we were flying straight (pardon the pun) into the annual gay pride parade. This started at 11am, which gave us plenty of time to catch the train into town and check it out. It was a great way to see the city as it was absolutely buzzing with people. Mind you, I don't think I have ever seen so many boobs and bums in all my life (and it wasn't just in the parade).

We managed to find ourselves a Westfield to grab some lunch and then headed for the Cartoon Art Gallery. This was an enjoyable way to spend an hour but not the most entertaining of exhibitions. By this time we were feeling a little sleepy so headed up to the park for a bit of a nap. We were in good company with many picnicers around and also plenty of fellow nappers.

We headed back to the airport at about 6ish and spent some time sleeping in the food court - the things you will do when you know that you aren't likely to meet anyone you know (especcially students)! Our flight to New York left at 11:25pm so we were ready for another restless night of flying.

Sunday 28 June (1)

Today marked the beginning of our latest big trip, we are off to New York. Although we have talked about this trip since our visit to LA in 2008 we only booked tickets 10 weeks ago and have been busy putting plans into action since. The biggest dilema was the dogs (it was a much simpler exercise with only one!) so a huge thanks to Mum (Julie), Bernadine Mum (Teresa) and also Adelaide!

Of course the last minute was a rush (why would today be any different); school finished up on Friday, followed by 2 chiro appointmnets, dinner with friends from work (thanks Kim and Richard) and ballet. Saturday meant footy, catching up with Jess and the kids (in Adelaide for the afternoon) and dropping off the dogs. So when we finally got home at about 8pm we were able to start packing in finish cleaning the house. We finished up just after midnight, so got a good 5 hours sleep!

We flew out of Adelaide at 8:45am heading for Sydney. This was the first of 6 flights on 5 seperate airlines. Of course this meant traipsing ourselves AND our luggage over to the international terminal. It was at this point that Mum and Bernadine let us know that Ruby had numerous vomiting episodes during the night, partly due to the stress of being deserted by her parents and partly due to the packet of wagon wheels, the chilli chocolate and the 2kg of lollies she ate in a fit of hysteria yesterday when she saw the suitcases out and her food for 3 weeks packed in the car! I swear I was only out of the room for 5 minutes.

We flew out of Sydney at 2:45pm on United Airlines, heading for San Francisco. It didn't take long to work out why United has such cheap flights. Despite the ads for their luxurious Business and First class sections, with their 180 degree flat beds and extra leg room; economy was behind the times with only shared tvs. You can imagine Phil's disappointment when he realised there would be no choice of movie, no cartoons, no games, no pause button for toilet breaks. The upside was we managed about 5 hours sleep on account of limited distractions. The food was also disappointing, but probably not as disappointing as a US$6 tariff for alcoholic beverages! Remind me to book QANTAS for my next long haul trip!