We ran the air conditioner all night last night. I’m not sure if it disturbed TOTIL, but I used earplugs and didn’t hear a thing. I often use earplugs at night for reasons that I won’t go into here … but let’s just say that I am a relatively light sleeper and easily disturbed.
It’s been hot, hot, hot again all day.
You know that you’re in trouble when your phone gives you a notification first thing in the morning (7.00am) that it is “25 degrees, 1 degree hotter than yesterday”. At 7.00am!
I mentioned yesterday that it had been hot. This weekend just gone was the Labor Day holiday weekend and everything was just crazy. I don’t know if it is the heat, or the holiday, but there was a bit of the vida loca going on, and for some unknown reason it seemed that a significant number of NY women were getting around town dressed in a style that can only be described as “unfettered”.
It was difficult not to notice.
We had a small subway incident yesterday where one of us swiped our metro card and went through the turnstile successfully, and the other one swiped their card and did not get through the turnstile.
The great thing about the metro card is that you only swipe it to enter the subway, and you don’t need to swipe to get out. The problem with the metro card is that once you have swiped your card, you cannot swipe it again for another 18 minutes.
So when one of us swiped their card and didn’t get through the turnstile, neither of us was going anywhere for at least another 18 minutes. (Well, technically one of us could have gone somewhere …)
Given the heat (I did mention the heat, right?), we went off to McDonald’s for an “any size drink for $1” special and cooled off for about 18 minutes. That fact alone possibly goes some way to explaining the number of fat Americans. Maybe that’s why they always walk around with Big Gulp cups?
On the way back to the train, it was hard not to notice a young African American lady who was small in stature, but big in other ways, running for the train. Yes, wearing less that she should have been in case you were wondering.
I can only assume that she was standing in the wrong line when God was giving out brains.
It’s a miracle that she didn’t take someone’s eye out!
But I digress.
Today was our first “normal” day in NY, with everyone back to work. We were subway ninjas today, getting on at our local station (Kingston-Throop Avenue) at about 8.30 and heading into Manhattan.
Because it was a work day, the trains were packed and everyone just seemed a bit more subdued. Maybe because they were going back to work, but I should note that most of the women also seemed much better supported.
We got off at Penn Street Station and hit the shops. A couple of days ago, TOTIL thought that she was an Uptown Girl and went shopping at Saks 5th Avenue. She looked at one pair of shoes for $975, then another pair of Jimmy Choo shoes for $2,695! Those of you who are Facebook friends would know that already. Even though she didn’t buy anything, I let her think that she was an Uptown Girl for the day.
Today we decided to shop according to our socio-economic status and we hit KMart and Target.
We then browsed around H&M, Macys, and JC Penny. I’m not sure if you are familiar with JC Penny, but a number of years ago they produced a really clever and funny advertisement called “The Dog House”.
There was only a few things that I wanted to do, but we “didn’t have time”. I would have been happy to spend a couple of hours browsing the multi-level Victoria’s Secret store, but I wasn’t allowed to because of time.
I also wanted to pick up a couple of small souvenirs but 2 x 1.3kg party packs of M&Ms were deemed too heavy to carry.
After lunch, we did a walking tour of some of the fascinating areas of NY – Soho, Little Italy and Chinatown.
So here’s a fun fact: Many suburb names in NY are actually acronyms (or acro-names according to our tour guide).
Soho stands for “SOuth of HOuston Street.
Remember the other day I was poking fun at a suburb named Dumbo? Another acronym: Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.
Soho is now a really chic suburb, probably a bit like West End. 20 years ago you wouldn’t consider living there, and now you couldn’t afford to anyway.
TOTIL got to go into her new favourite shop and buy some pastries.
She also got some of her Uptown Girl thing back again after the walk, with a look around in Bloomingdales Soho.
It’s a funny thing – we entered Bloomingdale’s at the ground level, circled the store, went up to Level 1 and circled, up to Level 2 and circled, and didn’t see one thing for men. Only ladies wear. Who says that there is no such thing as gender discrimination?
The next suburb on the tour was Little Italy, followed by Chinatown. Really interesting, quirky suburbs with some great, cheap places to eat. Fun to explore.
This street (below) used to have more deaths per annum that the rest of NY put together.
Our tour guide – Gabby – was great, but like most 20-somethings she had trouble speaking a sentence without, like, stopping to you know, like, say like.
More likes than I ever get on Facebook, and almost as many as the number of black Chevy Suburbans that I’ve seen in the city.
I started the day feeling like a camel, because the hump on my back contained a lot of water. By the end of the day I was starting to feel like a pack-animal because the water had been replaced with souvenirs.
But we had fun, saw lots of stuff, got to eat really cheap and delicious dumplings (5 for $1.50) and we come home with sore feet. That’s the sign of a great day walking around NY!
Tonight we are off to Broadway to see a show, so I’ll have to tell you all about that tomorrow.
Today’s vital statistics:
- Number of steps taken: 17169 & 20142
- Number of subway journeys: 5
- Number of donuts consumed: 3 (although 1 was a cronut so maybe that doesn’t count)
- Number of pizza slices consumed: 2
- Number of dumplings consumed: 5
- Temperature when going to bed: 29 deg C
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Ciao
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