Day 20 - New York

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Woke up this morning to snow, it was a lot more than the other night and great to look at. This made us stay in bed for a little longer and we didn't end up leaving the hotel until about 10.30am.

We didn't have too much planned for the day and started walking around the Fashion District and through Chelsea and Soho. It's definitely not as glitzy as Times Square but there are still plenty of nice areas, including parks and walkways. We learned from a tour guide the other day that New York actually has more parks than skyscrapers which surprised us both.

After a coffee to warm up at Starbucks, we were back on our way to our first stop which was lunch at Katz's Deli. This place is very famous in New York as it has been around since 1888 and it was absolutely packed when we arrived. The place is famous for two reasons, firstly for the size of their sandwiches which are absolutely massive, and secondly because it was the place of the famous "I'll have what she's having" scene in When Harry Met Sally. I tried to get Lauren to re-enact Meg Ryan's part of the scene but I was no chance to get that over the line. We each had their signature sandwich which was pastrami and it was something different but really really good.

We were absolutely full after that and didn't want to look at any more food. That lasted for about a 10 minute taxi ride when we arrived at our next stop which was the Magnolia Bakery. This place was famous for the show Sex and the City, crap show but good cupcakes. We bought a few to take back to the hotel and needed a rest, we covered a few miles of walking this morning and it starts to take its toll after a while.

A quick rest and we were back on the road and this time heading back towards Times Square to do a bit more shopping. We started to get a few presents out of the way and again visited Macy's. I think we've now been there three times and probably only seen about 1/4 of the whole shop. A few more shops and a lot more walking and we arrived at the Sony building where they show all their products and they preview their new products that will hit the stores eventually. It was pretty good but nothing spectacular.

We did see one funny thing on our walk today, in New York about 90% of the streets are one-way, so if you want to go to 26th street, you might need to turn down 27th street and then come from the other way. Apart from Times Square, Fifth Avenue is probably the busiest street in New York and some lady must have seen a shop or street sign at the last minute and first she decided to cut off traffic, and then turned down Fifth Avenue the wrong way. She then froze and was stuck facing the wrong way with all this oncoming traffic.

Lots of shopping and lots of walking and by 6pm we were done. Still full from lunch so we didn't even discuss dinner, caught the subway back to the hotel and have been here since. We've packed so much into the time that we've had here and probably seen and done almost everything that we've planned to do. Still there is so much more we could see but you would need a few months here to do absolutely everything. We didn't do heaps today but we're happy just wondering around over the next couple of days and finding things along the way.

Got a few shopping distrcits to see tomorrow and might look at still taking a trip to Brooklyn on Monday which is our final day. Then we're off to London, the weather has been up and down however the forecast for next week is pretty promising, if it stays around 7 or 8 degrees as predicted, we'll be very happy.

I also apologise to the Hilton hotel in advance for when they discover orange bed sheets after I knocked over my fanta on the bedside table!

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