New York: Friday

I love New York. I woke up Friday morning, thankfully not too early as is usually the case the first morning after I've flown west, and felt strangely surreal about meeting famous people last night. I like to think that people are just people and I don't get fazed by celebrity, but I think that's only because I've never met anyone quite so famous before. Actually the whole experience was a bit surreal - what do you say to people you think you already know in some way? You can't exactly ask them 'So, what do you do?' and they aren't interested in what you do (although I did discuss Manchester and the North West with Daniel Craig, as he's from that area too). Still, an interesting, if a little bizarre, experience.

Moving on. We got up, dressed and went to a deli round the corner for breakfast, then headed off to the Empire State Building for the now-compulsory bird's-eye view of the city. The weather was fantastic for that time of year: bright and not too cold at all. We got the usual shots from the top of the Empire State, and this time we paid to go to the 102nd floor, which quite honestly was not worth the money. It was much quieter, but it was inside so all our pictures were taken from the other side of the glass and only gave you exactly the same view as the 86th floor, albeit you could spend as long as you liked gazing into the distance as there weren't hordes of people waiting to stand in your spot.

We got the subway up to 57th & 7th and had lunch at Carnegie's deli, opposite Carnegie Hall. They are famous for their portion sizes, and in hindsight it possibly wasn't the best place to eat considering we didn't want to over-indulge too much this weekend. But it was definitely an experience! Rob ordered a turkey, bacon & swiss sandwich and got this:


He made a valiant attempt at it but really didn't come even close to finishing it. I ordered a hot bacon & egg roll and I finished it, but it was less than half the size of Rob's...

After lunch, we went for a walk through Central Park, and it was perfect weather for it. I took a couple of shots:




We went for an early meal at Tao on 58th Street. We'd eaten here when we came in 2005, and we ate at Tao Las Vegas in March, but this time we weren't so impressed. The food was very nice, in fact I had shabu shabu for the first time since Kyoto in June, but the place was just a little too pretentious. OK, very pretentious. But at least we lowered the tone a bit. A lot.

We deliberately booked an early meal as past experience tells me the second evening is when I'm at my tiredest (although maybe it just has to do with sitting still), so we went back to the hotel and crashed out afterwards.