US here we come

Hi,

(This post was written a few days ago but was waiting in draft – so is out of sequence with events)

I was pretty carefull when i bought my shoes and thought I was well prepared – though I didn’t buy joggers – after being a long time fan of Sex and the City I thought they might not be cool. On our first days here we walked around a lot, looking at our map, plotting a path and thinking, ah that’s not far. One thing I’ve learnt the island of Manhattan is long and wide, and the distances between the west village, little Italy, Lower and Upper Manhattan, Central Park, Harlem – the distance between the east and the west side are extensive. I don’t know how other people go but I still haven’t really got my bearings. The grid pattern of the streets makes navigation all that much easier. How can you get lost? Needless to say, we’ve strayed from time to time and I am much more careful to watch the progression so as not to add too many more steps than necessary. Barry’s suggested we look for the place of the sun – rising in the east or setting in the west – and thus giving us some guidance – which has helped.

So, over these last days I’ve managed to talk Barry into using the subway and taxis more, which has helped. We’re not good at getting away early and left the hotel at about 9.30 to 9.45 (pretty late A) and because Barry has appointments at various heritage institutions we had to be at lower Manhattan by 1pm – but then what to do in these few hours in the morning – when there is so much to do. So we decided to go up to the American Natural History Museum (which is huge and really could take up a day – though Joey wasn’t impressed). We did our couple of hours and with a combination of both train and taxi managed to get back to the other one on time – though by the time the second one was finished we were pretty tired.

I, for one, like to look through natural history museums, though from what we saw of this one – it was a mix of the old 1950s exhibitions (which were pretty nice), the newer informative formats which loads of text and photos (that didn’t really work), and the more creative presentations that were good. It was worth visiting but unfortunately I don’t think Joey got much out of it though thankfully Hannah was more interested and engaged. Made me wonder about the value of all those school excursions that the kids have told me are generally regimented.

The second heritage place was the Lower East Side Tenement Museum which was really good, very informative, but the tour went for over about one and a half hours and we were standing in one place for long stretches of time while the tour leader told us stories about the the building and the families that lived there. Like I said it was very informative and interesting but by the end my feet were sore.

Better go for now, Joannie