Day 16...New York, New York! - 12th July

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this eating thing. It's hard to eat on such a tight budget and there's a lot of junk around. Even when you order healthy they give you a fucked version anyway. So even though I have been walking around tonnes and sweating heaps I am still a bit of a chubby boom-ba and haven't lost the weight I expected. Hmmm. n But I got some fruit for breaky this morning, and a wrap for dinner so that's pretty good (no lunch, a lot of the time we're only eaty twice a day so Nates losing weight) but I did have a frappucino with cream today - oh dear!

We had a few goes at getting up then took the train down to Tribeca, which we kinda missed as we got disoriented and walked in the wrong direction and got all hot. Then as usual, another helpful New Yorker pointed in the right direction (we had walked the wrong way) so we headed up Broadway into Soho, eating at a nice little work deli on the way, which had about 7 varieties of coffee.

Soho has smaller highrises with lots of wrought iron fire escapes. The stores are all the same as everywhere else (your H&M, Banana Republic, etc etc) with some Louis Vuitton and stuff thrown in. Becuae of the thin roads and separated buildings, it was a hike aropund to shop and it was hot, and Nate didn't think it much of a nice area. So after our first quibble for the trip since starting out (which didn't last long) we headed to the subway.

On one corner it was just me and Nate standing there when the little man said to go (sorry, by little man I mean the pedestrian crossing light) but a taxi belted through without stopping so we decided to wait. It ended up heading through the intersection and fully t-boning this other taxi side on!!! There was an almighty bang, I shat myself, Nathan saw the other side of the taxi get pushed sideways a bit. It all happened about 2 metres from us! It didn't seem like that much of a dramatic bingle the offender lost his front guard clean off, and the victim had a crumpled in side) but when the struck taxi parked, the passenger door opened and a lady was in there shreiking and clutching at herself and putting up a right fuss. She must have got an awful fright, and Nate said if she had been leaning against the door it would have really hurt and thrown her to the other side. Anyways, a crowd turned up and they had phones so we melted off back into the crowd and a cop car rocked up as we left (Nate didn't want to make a statement, and I hadn't even thought about it!)
As we headed off, we happend upon a funky store which was having a sale and had some really nice clothes super cheap. I bought a pair of shorts (as I only had one pair of long jeans, and one small denim skirt) and Nate got some shorts as well. After that we passed a dog accessories store which had a doggy day care in there! It was so cute, there was a pug just chillin' on the window sill and the best black French Bulldog wriggling around the place.

Then we got the subway up to 53rd and 5th street and walked along fifth avenue. Saks on fifth was an uber snob department store (the chocolate cafe was like sushi train but with hand made chocolate or makeup on the plates!) the usual brands were there like Mont Blanc, Zeigna etc. Once you've seen one store of those, you've seen them all really. The rest of the stores were like that along 5th avenue as well. The buildings were higher storied and more modern and the street walk was classier as well. It was hot and steamy and we were tired and sweaty and dirty so we popped into Trump Tower for a iced coffee. Go the Trump! Then when we came out it was raining and we had a wet walk back to the subway. It was kinda cool though, my heart lifted to see the classy buildings, the black umbrellas, the rain, the car horns, the yellow taxis - sorry cabs!

Having a shower was cool as there is a little window in the shower so I could watch the rain in the street as I showered! By the time we headed out, it was pouring down!! The streets were flooded in points. We tried flagging a taxi (sorry - cab) but they were all busy with the rain and all, so we just walked the 3 blocks to the cinema. We ate at a real nice diner (Nate had a burger) and watched some people set up for the MTV video awards across the street. There wer emodels instead of stars so they could check the lighting and stuff before the real deals turned up and everyone looked like "so hot right now" with big sunnies and tousled hair. Wankers. We missed the stars turning up as we paid to see a movie, and stars are crap anyway they take dumps like everyone else, so we watched Nacho Libre which was ok, the usual Jared Hess fare.

Then we went home and read and chilled and laughed at all the disaster warnings and sensationalism for the storm on TV