Adios Mehico, hello New York

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Had a nice three days chilling out in Patzcuaro which is a lovely old small town in the Mexican state of Michoacan. There are many shops carefully hidden within the old buildings so as not to spoil the town. Fantastic artisan goods are on offer and you can watch the craftsmen at work intricately hand painting items or carving wood. It was a shoppers dream, but my purse remained firmly in my pocket as I would have needed a plane to transport everything home that I wanted to buy! Instead I spent most of the time just relaxing and people watching from various cafes around the two main plazas. We did take a boat trip to Janitzio which is a small island on the nearby lake, but have to say that the island itself was a bit of a disappointment. It's still worth going if only to see the statue of Morelo and also to see the local fishermen in their boats with their huge butterfly nets. They demonstrate how they use the nets and then come alongside the boat to collect tips! You can climb the spiral stairs to the top inside the Morelo statue to look at the murals adorning the walls and poke your head out the top for views of the surrounding area. It was quiet and there was no one else on the stairs when I was there, which was just as well as it must be a nightmare trying to negotiate the steps when it's busy and there are loads people trying to go up and down at the same time. The approach to the statue takes you through hundreds of souvenir shops all trying to sell the same thing and other than that there's not much there other than loads of flies, so we were glad that we hadn't arranged to stay the night. The boat trip was sweet though, with three old Mexican guys making their way along the crowded small boat armed with their cello, guitar and violin to entertain us with traditional Mexican music. I left Patzcuaro on Saturday and then flew from Morelia to Los Angeles, arriving just before midnight. My flight on to New York wasn't until 9am on Sunday though so I spent the night on a couple of airport cafe chairs. Amazingly I did manage to get a few hours sleep in spite of the continual airport loud speaker announcements, but it did take a few minutes to prise myself out of the chairs and straighten myself back out again once I woke up in the morning!

Arrived in New York on Sunday evening and Clare arrived from Canada a couple of hours later. Both shattered from travelling, we agreed to catch up the following day and both quickly crashed out in the hostel. Over the last four days, we've been working our way through the sights of NY. We were lucky enough to get a pass into the Statue of Liberty, numbers which are now limited following 9/11, although you're no longer allowed to climb to the crown of the statue. Understandably, security meaures are now very strict and we have spent a fair bit of time, queueing to have our bags, and even our bodies, scanned.

There is a ticket agency called TKTS where you can buy half price tickets to shows for that evening and so we went to an off Broadway show on our first night which was really good. We went back yesterday hoping to get cheap tickets to a Broadway show last night, but even half price was out of our budget so we thought we'd missed out. However, just on the off chance we turned up at the theatre 5 minutes before the start to see if we could wangle something cheaper and managed to get standing tickets for 20 dollars. We were at the back of the main stalls and had a great views of a fantastic performance of Mamma Mia, a musical based around the music of Abba - what a bargain.

We've done loads of walking and a fair few subway rides, but have yet to gain a decent sense of direction when emerging from a subway station and not knowing whether we're facing north, south, east or west until we've walked a block!

Have to say I'm enjoying pigging out on bagels, hot dogs and muffins, but just as well it's limited to a week! Did overdo it on the old hot chocolate addiction today though. Found a place called The City Bakery which serves hot chocolate that is so thick it is basically melted Dairy Milk. It tasted fab but should really be served as an Expresso size measure rather than the cups which they do serve it in, as needless to say, greedy pig me almost finished it off. Really not a good idea as it must have been the equivalent of a 200g bar of Dairy Milk and therefore spent the rest of the day feeling slightly ick!

I'm liking the city of New York, but unfortunately I can't say the same for the climate. I'm currently doing a very nice impression of Rudolph. No I'm not pulling a sleigh, but am sporting a very nice red nose! It seems my body doesn't like the NY temperatures after three months of warmth and subsequently I have spent most of today sneezing and blowing my nose. The one advantage being that it may get me two seats to myself when I take the Greyhound bus to Niagara as no one will want to share my germs! Clare went to Niagara when she was in Canada, so she's heading for Washington instead. I had originally planned to see Washington as well, but decided that there wasn't enough time for both and would prefer to see the Falls. It's a 9 hour bus ride there, but hopefully it will be worth it.....

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