I heart NY.....

I don't even know where to start......I guess apologizing for the spelling mistakes.

We're sitting in an unusually dark internet cafe on Bleeker Street, after just having a fantastic lunch at Risotteria's, an gorgeous gluten-free Italian place, with gorgeous gluten-free staff (who offered to be our tour guides...wink, wink). We're going back there for dinner.........to eat, not to look at the handsome men, I promise. But in all seriousness, a real meal after three days of cornflakes, doritos, ham and fries is a welcome change, although I'm used to the cereal diet. Kim did have her first bagel with schmear, which was fun for her, and excruciating for me.

So to recap the last few days:

Our first day in NY was maniacal. Our flights were delayed, and immigration was a nightmare. We had no idea how to find our shuttle from the airport to the hotel, so we just asked some random guy, who said, "Yeah, come with me", without even looking at our voucher. Cut to Kim and I sitting in the back of a family-sized van, huddled together, discussing the darker possibilities, being death, rape, mugging, over-charging, or just being dumped in Queens somewhere. Let me tell you, Brooklyn at night = scary; at least for two suddenly-very-suburban kids from Melbourne. But we made it to the hotel after the surreal and slightly scary NYC driving experience (these people love their horns and their accelerators), we dumped our stuff, went for a walk and got some Maccas - of course - and then slept for a bit.

The next day we hit Central Park, which is amazingly beautiful. We don't know how anyone could hate a city that has such a peaceful and scenic centre. We took photos of trees, squirrels (we were very excited), hobos, Strawberry Fields and pretty much everything in between. But even those pictures don't do the Park justice. It's really beautiful, much more so than I expected.

After Central Park was the American Museum of Natural History, where we saw Dinosaurs and went to the Planetarium to see a movie narrated by Robert Redford, but the highlight was Kim's disturbing self-serve salad of imposter-cous-cous, several un-mixy vegetables, ranch dressing, and someother unlikely contenders. It sounds fine, but it - like Times Square - had to be seen to be believed.

The next day (don't ask me which day it was, we're not even keeping track), we got to MoMA, which was amazing. Cultural overload kind of kicked in, which led to us adopting a more click-and-walk attitude, which meant we got to Starry Night, took a picture and kept on walking.......a mistake we won't make again. MoMA was fantastic, just like I pictured. Van Goh, Cezanne, Pollack, Gaugin, Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Dali...they were all there. I love Pollack, we have discovered.

We took our first subway ride downtown, which actually turned into our third when Kim forgot her camera, and we had to go back to the hotel. We got called "gorgeous broads" by some hilarious old perv on the subway - which in Melbourne would have been disturbing, but here was awesome - and then hit Times Square. I swear, that place cannot be described. It's like nothing else on earth and certainly not like anything in Melbourne. It's massive, and loud, and cold and bright and dark, and busy and a total drainer. Kim and I had our first bicker, caused by stress, overwhelmed-ness and tiredness, which was resolved by going downtown to Grammercy to see the Flatiron building and The Last Kiss - awesome, by the way.

Oh, we got stopped to be called beautiful by some former military guy, who was a little intense and weird. His suggestion was that we met him in the Diamond District and he'd get his friends, and we'd all hang out.....needless to say, we decline the crazy man's offer. Although Kim did think he was cute. THEN, I got mistaken for a New Yorker!!! Very exciting, someone stopped and asked me for directions. It was cool. On the other hand, we were fleeced out of 10 bucks, cos some guy raising money for a homeless shelter was nice to us, so of course we gave him money....at that point we'd have given any nice person money. It's not that New Yorkers are mean, they're just.....busy. Borderline rude, but in that New Yorky way that they're known for, and it's all part of the experience, right?

After yesterday's very full-on-ness we decided that a relaxing day of food and city ambience was needed, and we headed downtown to Soho and the East village, where we had the BEST hot chocolate in the entire world. It's what I imagined the hot chocolate from Chocolat would taste like. But it was so rich that even Kim couldn't finish it - and for those of you who know Kim, you know that's a challenge.

We checked out the Guggenheim, but most of it's closed to renovations, so that only took about half an hour, and that pretty much leads us to here..........

I'll update in a few days, when some more has happened! Tomorrow is the Circle Line Ferry and the NYC Marathon, then Monday we're hoping to head to Jersey, Tuesday is Financial District (WTC site, some other stuff), and then Tuesday is a short day; we fly out at night, heading for London.

More soon....miss you all, miss home already, but having loads of fun.

Definitely coming back, but next time with more money and more time!!!!!!!!

And Erin, have had more SATC moments than I can count.....The Blue Note, the site of Harry and Charlotte's wedding announcement photo, the park where Steve and Miranda get married, and many many more......it's so much fun!