A good night’s sleep behind us, we were ready to get out and explore New York. we were staying in Long Island City in Queens and my first surprise was that it looked like I’d imagined a normal American town would – I’d kind of expected skyscrapers to dominate the entire landscape, but in fact there weren’t many, and the ones that there were contained apartments and looked over the river.
The first stop was the shiny shiny diner, where we enjoyed corned beef hash and a couple cups of cwaaaarffee.
After the breakfast of champions, we caught the subway into Manhattan, and wandered through Little Italy and Chinatown, which was so much bigger and more fascinating than the ones I’d been to in other cities.
After a brief stop in a supermarket where you seemed to be able to choose your own live fish from a tank under the counter before it was killed and served to you, we continued walking south, passing by Wall Street and dodging the joggers along the river front. We rounded the peninsula of the island and stopped for hwat dwags, before heading to Century 21, a discounted designer store which I’d heard so much about, but was actually really disappointed by. Maybe it’s good if you’re the kind of person who can rummage around on the rails of TK Maxx and come out looking like a million dollars, but I am not.
Our aching feet thanked us as we managed to clamber back onto the right subway train and wander back to the apartment without getting lost. We settled onto the balcony for the evening, knocking back Long Island Iced Teas, eating hummus and playing Michael Trumps, a game, invented by our friends, which is basically Top Trumps with famous Michaels.
