The lady is a tramp (New York)

Mindful of being in a rut we decided not to eat Italian for a third night in succession.  This proved to a little more of a challenge than first anticipated.  We went for a stroll trying to find an ATM as cash reserves were running low.  In the process we noted that every second restaurant was Italian.  There were also ATMs located every 100m or so depending on what part of town you are in.  Be warned an ATM is not an ATM.  So far I have been charged $3 for using one particular brand and $4 for another.  The bank sponsored ones are free to use, if you can locate one and so the search continued. The most common variety is seen on almost every corner, nice, handy, convenient and highway robbery.  The most common machine charges $5 a withdrawal and you can only take out $40.  That's not a bad profit for someone.  We kept walking and found a Citibank machine in the 7-11, no charge.

We literally walked across the street for dinner to what appears to be a relatively new restaurant, Virginia's.  The menu was a little upmarket, but the door was held open for us and we were told that there was no corkage for BYO tonight.  Sold.  Across to the other corner to the liquor store,  a bottle of Sancerre sauvignon purchased and back to Virginia's.  

The restaurant is small and the tables are closely packed.  There is also a bar area as is fashionable around East Village/Alphabet City.  It is a trendy establishment, largely populated by Gen Y all speaking loudly to be heard over the top of the 80s music - Hall and Oates.  No further comment required.  The food is fine dining on a mid-range budget.  I had Atlantic Bass in a saffron broth - yum, and Jayne had a corn risotto (and stuff), also yum.  Main courses were around $24 and they were delicious, as was dessert.  We will be back to try other dishes on the menu.

Central Park part 1 (we didn’t see it all – this time)

The real news of the day – I slept last night for the first time – oh, yeah! 6 hours.  Still tired when I woke up, but that is beginning to make up for the last few nights’ poor sleep.  Anyway, moving on.

We braved the subway once again, which was all good.  Underground is incredibly hot and humid and on the occasion when you have to wait for a train it becomes uncomfortable very quickly.  Given how hot we were, we let the first over-crowded train pass by; the reasoning was that the platform was so crowded there must be another train close behind.  And there was.  Air-conditioned, not crowded, well worth the two stops we had to travel.

Changing trains is far more complex in Tokyo where one wrong step can sweep you into a current of people going in a different direction and you can end up lost, Finding Nemo style.  We made our way to our next platform.  The train arrived quickly and was relatively sparsely populated.  A couple of stations further on it was a little more crowded and a very tall African-American man got on and squeezed himself in between the two people directly opposite us.  All subway carriages have seats down the sides of the carriage that face each other with open standing room in between.

Once comfortable, he yells out, in his deep gravelly voice, f***.  The carriage pauses, including the two young men who had been doing some X Factor duet moments prior.  He continues, “You all on the same train as me” and then some stuff I couldn’t catch.  The train stops and the lady next to him moves to another seat.  At the next stop the two songsters get off the train.  In the meantime the man has been making vey loud statements punctuated with the f-word.  After the boys have gone, he has plenty of space but it doesn’t seem enough and he starts smacking the seat beside him muttering and swearing and throwing his arms around.  I bravely avoid his eyes and am fixated on the map Jayne has and how many more stops we will share this journey with a madman.  At the next stop he throws one more F-grenade into the carriage and leaves.  Furtive looks of relief all round.  We had just become a community, unified by this poor man.  Shakespeare, I think, said that adversity makes strange bedfellows.

Shortly after, we too left the underground and ventured back up into the sunlight and humidity.  After a couple of almost correct orienteering decisions, we re-directed ourselves to 5^th Avenue and the top North East corner of Central Park.

Someone providing the NYPD with some work

Despite its size (834 acres), the traffic noise is never far away.  The ponds/lakes that we came across today all had some unpleasant olfactory action at the end point where the wind collected all the detritus.  Not pretty.  Aside from that, it was lovely, but lacked a spectacular view, apart from the striking juxtaposition of nature against the Manhattan skyline.  The other notable thing is you are never alone in Central Park – it is known as the people’s park and they certainly make good use of its diverse facilities – seats, grass, paths, courts, playing fields, gardens, cycle ways, fountains, lakes, playgrounds, even a castle of sorts and an amphitheatre for Shakespearean festivals.  The formal gardens are tended by avid bands of volunteers who move around in teams wearing green shirts.

The Jackie O reservoir

We walked down toward the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis reservoir that once was the water reserve for the city.  I’d die before I drank anything from that polluted, algae-infected dam.  As we circumnavigated the perimeter, more energetic New Yorkers shuffled, jogged, ran and rode (sans helmets) around it.  Clearly some were in serious training.  There was more lycra than you’d see at a cyclist gathering – oops, they were there too.  It was hot, it was humid, all this activity was making me thirsty.  It was time to head for The Loeb Boathouse.

Would you drink that? It smells as good as it looks.

Don’t think we hadn’t earned a rest.  By this time we had walked over 7km.  Did I mention it was hot and humid dear reader?  Oh, OK.  We found the Boathouse before we made our next stop, the Alice in Wonderland statue.  It was almost 1:30pm.  The lunch rush should be almost over.  Incorrect.  If we wanted to wait – oh, maybe 45 minutes, we could take a beeper.  Time to re-hydrate, so the answer was yes.

We gathered our beeper and went to the outside bar and there were … no vacant tables.  We went to the bar and ordered drinks - uncharacteristically I opted for beer.  Jayne lassoed a couple of stools and the nice young Australian couple sitting at the bar moved down to allow us space – you can’t block the serving area.  There we sat, watching the barmaid (can you still use that term?) pour wine into glasses with such careless force that I would have been happy to wring out the bar mat at the end of the day and fill a bottle or two.

Shakespeare's garden

More of Shakespeare's garden

One beer turned into two as 45 minutes grew into an hour.  I drew the line at a third pint before food.  We drifted back over to the restaurant to see what progress we had made in the queue.  Almost there, two more parties in front of us.  So we waited and watched – people.  And then, “It was worth the wait, you have a waterside table” said the girl at the desk.  It was true - it was a great spot.

The view from our table

Menus arrived.  "Order everything and eat slowly," I said to Jayne. "I want to make other people wait too."  The menu listed ‘Appetisers’ and ‘Entrees’ - no mains.  Hmmm.  Confusion.  Good wine list.  Happy days.  I selected the wine and Jayne asked the waiter the obvious question.  When he had gone to give us time to deliberate, the lady at the next table, from Perth, explained that this was the same as ‘Entrée’ and ‘Main Course’ at home.  Similar to what the waiter had tried to explain.  Jayne was well behaved in not explaining to all concerned the etymology of the word ‘entrée’.

We chatted to the West Australians for a while – they have a son living here – and then relaxed into our wine and food.  Both were delectable and the serving sizes were, well, American.  I ordered the New York strip steak for ‘entrée’ thinking it would be strips of sirloin, you know, a New York cut.  No no no.  It was a steak the size of Texas.  There will be no need for dinner tonight.

Over lunch, we amused ourselves by critiquing the rowing styles on display on the lake.  It was a miracle that there were no collisions and that people made it back to shore without assistance - a lot of 'unco' oar action was on display.  We also spotted a sizeable turtle coming up for air in the lake just adjacent to our table.  As we whiled the afternoon away, the cloud cover increased and some of the taller buildings began to disappear.  Rain and thunderstorms were predicted for the evening so we thought it best to have a shot at peak hour travel on the Subway, but only after locating the statue of Alice.

Alice

An uneventful trip home saw us safely in the apartment before any rain.  Disappointingly, the internet had died in our absence.  Being such a tech-savvy geek (I’m wearing my glasses), I planned a course of action.  Turn the modem off and then on again.  Nothing.  Turn the wifi link on my computer off and then back on … blah blah blah.  Tried everything, nothing worked. Jayne phoned the emergency number – it will be fixed by 9pm.  At this time they have another hour.  I’m not sure they realise that there will be people in Australia who have to commence their day without reading of our exploits.  This is an emergency.

And the title, since you've made it this far, a song by Lady Ella herself.  The full quote, "I like a prize fight that isn't a fake.  I like the rowing on Central Park lake. I go to Opera and stay wide awake. That's why the lady is ..."

And tomorrow?  Well that is largely weather dependent, but we shall probably commence our New York City Pass and explore the Guggenheim.