25.7.2012 – 25.7.2012  35 °C

After a nice sleep in and a tasty brekky we decided to go for a wander around our neighbourhood with a plan to end up at Union Square to buy some food from the farmer’s market. We wandered down 15^th St (our apt is on 1^st Ave in between 15^th and 16^th St) which took us past one of the large hospitals in NY. Behind the hospital is a lovely two blocks that are filled with a park.. really nice to wander thru some greenery in this concrete jungle. The park is filled with summer blooms so not only is it a shady oasis but it is also a colourful one! Directly behind the parks is Union Square where the Farmer’s Mkt is held twice a week.

The market was goodly sized but we struggled to find veges that you could buy singularly.. I mean we don’t need 10 carrots we just wanted a couple! We eventually found everything we were looking for and managed to part with plenty of dollars for our troubles! Sadly, if you want to buy good fresh food you have to pay for it… I’m sure we could have got it quite a bit cheaper in a supermarket but I’m sure we wouldn’t have gotten the quality.. We grabbed our veges, had a heart attack at the price of the steak (equiv of $40 per kg for steak)—so didn’t buy any, before we headed back to our digs for some morning tea.

We actually decided to have an early lunch at the flat (and forgo morning tea) before we headed out for our first real look at NYC. We headed up town on the sub way back towards Times Square to buy ourselves a ticket on the Big Red Bus. We were keen to get a birds eye view of the town so we thought we’d get a two day pass on the bus so that we could see the sites. We upgraded and bought ourselves bus tickets and attraction tickets so that we wouldn’t have to buy tickets at the Statue of Liberty, the Met, Natural History Museum etc. Anyway, after we had grabbed our tickets we boarded the next available Big Bus and headed uptown to see Central Park, the museums and Times Square.

It’s a really hot day today, so I have to admit that after being on the bus for ten minutes I was already starting to feel the heat! Luckily part of the trip was under the shady trees of central park so we at least got some respite! The trip started in the mad house of Times Square, took us up the western side of Central Park (past the Natural History Museum) up to the northern end of Manhattan and into Harlem. Our trip ended with us heading back down the eastern side of Central Park (past the art gallery district) and back down past the Plaza Hotel and back into Times Square.

We got off the bus at Carnegie Hall to check out the Carnegie Deli. We went into the deli looking for some afternoon tea so between the three of us we ordered a couple of milkshakes a piece of Blueberry cheesecake and a marbled cheesecake… Now I like cheesecake but holy smokes they brought out a quarter of a pie for each piece! Not only were the wedges largely cut they are about 3 inchs high!!! The pieces of cheesecake were the largest I’ve ever seen…. I actually had to stop eating cheesecake because I started to feel REALLY unwell. We probably should have worked out that our pieces of cake would be large after seeing the sandwiches they brought to other tables….. One sandwich came out with two pounds (that’s close to a kilo) of shaved meat!!! Can you imagine eating a kg of shaved ham in between two pieces of bread??? Not too surprisingly, a lot of uneaten food was going back into the kitchen. A real waste of food (here’s hoping they do something with the left overs considering the amount of homeless peoples in the US). Moral to the story, unless you have an enormous appetite, don’t eat at the Carnegie Deli!!

We finished our day by doing a bit of a window shopping along 5^th Ave before our feet and heads started to tell us that it was time to call it a day. We had some tasty chicken and veges for our dinner before we ended our day watching some of TV. Day 2 completed in NYC! Off to find the Met tomorrow!!!

Song of the Day– Alicia Keys, Empire State of Mind Part II