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Yesterday morning, we took the subway to Brooklyn and had a walk through the little neighbourhoods and along the promenade. It was fairly quiet and very leafy where we were and a lot of the promenade is currently under a huge revamp to make it into a sports and recreation area. The views from the promenade of Brooklyn of downtown Manhattan, the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges were spectacular.

After walking around for a while we decided to head along the Manhattan bridge which gave us a great view of the Brooklyn Bridge and brought us to the main island in the middle of Chinatown. Compared to Toronto's chinatown, New York's is really, really Chinese!! There were a lot of restaurants and shops selling tat, as well as many fruit and veg stalls. The whole place was noisy and colourful and very busy. Little Italy takes up a small part of Chinatown and we walked up through Little Italy into Soho (South of Houston Street), Noho (North of Houston Street) and Nolita (North of Little Italy), which weren't really up to much (and it started raining!)

By the time we got to Union Square, the sun was shining again and we walked right into a demo about "Corporate America" and the BP oil spill in the Gulf. There was a couple of speakers and a number of banners. The main thread of it all was that democracy means that the American people should have a voice and not just corporations and companies. A fair point, I am sure you will agree. Until, the demonstrators decided, rather hypocritically, that the chap with the banner opposing abortion shouldn't be allowed to hold it up near THEIR demonstration. How democratic of them!

After a lovely little beer stop just off Union Square, we walked the rest of the way home through the Flatiron district and up Broadway. By the time we got home, our feet and legs were absolutely exhausted, but it was great to have walked so far.

In the evening we went to a comedy show just off Broadway. We paid 10 dollars each for the tickets from an official seller on the street and were told that one of the Wayans Brothers would be appearing, it sounded great. We also got told that the tickets were VIP, that there was a 2 drink minimum purchase but then drinks were free and that we were also invited to the after show party where there would be jazz music and we could meet the comedians. It sounded fab and a bargain for $10 - we now know why!! When we got there, we got told that "everyone was VIP" with a little chuckle and got shown to our seats (which were just like everyone elses, not in any way VIP). The first three comedians were great, but the last two were terrible. The fourth one, was an Israeli lady and she bombed terribly. It was excruciating how embarassing it was, literally no one laughed at her jokes! As for the after show party, we soon realised we had been scammed. Still, it wasnt a bad night for twenty dollars and a valuable lesson was learnt which will probably serve us well for the rest of our travels. Don't buy things or believe people who sell things on the street as its probably a load of rubbish!

Anyway, today we are packing up and going to pick up the hire car for the next week as we have a room booked in a Washington DC hostel for the next three nights, we'll soon see what that's like!! We're then going to make our way back from Washington to NY in time for our flight to Vegas this time next week.

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