A dull day was forecast - how wrong can you get?! New York does not do dull! We headed for the subway and uptown to Times Square today. Coming up from the dim light in the subway straight out onto the glitz of Times Square is quite an experience in itself. Dave's first experience of Times Square had him trying to look everywhere at once and he found it hard to take it all in without wide angle eyes. We'd headed for Times Square first to check out how to buy discounted theatre tickets but it turned out the discount ticket outlet does not open until 3pm.

Serendipity took charge now and we noticed a small crowd gathering, several NYPD officers loitering, event security staff and a band doing a sound check on the back of a lorry. It looked like free music might be in the offing so we asked one of the security staff who was on and his totally uninterested reply was, "Paul McCartney." Security man might have not been impressed but we were! We actually didn't believe him at first but hung around and spoke to a couple from Manchester who had been told the same by a policeman - game on!

We were in a crowd of a few hundred, not a few thousand and the word was Paul was to appear at 1pm i.e. in about 15 minutes. How lucky was that? Sure enough there was a ripple from one corner of the audience and on stage bounces Sir Paul to announce the surprise concert launching his new album. In these days of flashmob and ubiquitous mobile phones we were surprised the audience didn't get significantly bigger so we definitely felt part of a privileged few to hear Paul run through four new songs, with two sounding particularly good. Paul played piano on a couple, one on electric guitar and one on acoustic and as you can see from the photos we had a great view. So much for a dull day!

The only disappointment of the day was finding that the Guggenheim ramp galleries are closed for a major exhibition refurbishment but this did offer us the opportunity of an extended visit to the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). Given the time it was straight to the cafe for lunch and what appeared to be a depressingly long queue. However, MOMA have clearly got throughput sorted and we were soon seated and ordering. MOMA have food sorted too and we both enjoyed taster options, Jill having three types of bruschette and Dave sampling antipasti.

Then on to the exhibits starting on the top floor with Jill picking up a customised iPod media guide. Jill's iPod system was a very impressive use of technology providing audio guide and allowing photos to be taken all of which could be accessed on-line at a later date. We both agreed Van Gogh's Starry, Starry Night was the stand-out exhibit but we also enjoyed the the two large Monet Water Lilies, Piccaso and some more modern sculptures as well as the photography of Walker Evans who captured American life in the first half of the 1920s and 30s.

It was way passed 3pm, prime cheap ticket time, but we decided to take our chances back at Times Square where we managed to pick up "limited visibility" tickets for the musical Pippin - a proper Broadway show. So just enough time for a quick bite to eat but our expectations of price and quality around Times Square were not good and we didn't have time to hunt around. We quickly came across Scarlatto, a reasonably priced Italian restaurant which provided tasty vegetarian pasta dishes for us both. Eating well in New York was proving to be much easier and less expensive than anticipated.

Our experience of "limited visibility" tickets has been good previously and this time wan't bad with seats on the front row of the balcony but off to the right where the box did restrict the view of one edge of the stage. We missed a little of the action but in a small theatre our front row position gave us an excellent view of what was a lively, colourful show combining song, dance, acrobatics and magic. All in all a good choice! Of course Dave enjoyed coming out of the Music Box Theatre into the night scene of Times Square where even the Subway sign is in lights. And that just about sums up our dull day in Uptown New York.