My first day in New York has been spent taking care of the basics! Like cleaning... Unpacking.... Laundry

I am staying at my friend Linda's apartment in scarsdale, a quaint village 30 minutes outside of central manhattan. Tudor style architecture features heavily, and there are lots of trees that look naked without their spring foliage, but I can see buds starting to appear. The village has everything I could want, a supermarket, restaurants, a particularly good wine shop and a newly opened gourmet chicken rotisserie and foodstore. There are lots of parks and wilderness areas too, as well as some interesting homewares stores and a lively Irish pub within stumbling distance. Everything a girl could want .....

The apartment is lovely - the photo is the outside of the building - Tudor style and very English. I would love to take the entrance leadlight doors and wrought iron lamps home to my Art Deco apartment in Brisbane, they would look great in the foyer! The apartment is bigger than photos suggested, and beautifully decorated. I have a cute but functional kitchen and bathroom, a comfy bedroom and a living room with massive windows and views of other apartments, trees and the street.

As the apartment has been vacant for a couple of months, I started my day with a complete spring clean - laundry, dusting, vacuuming and mopping! It is sparkling clean and being aired as I type. Doing the laundry is different - there is a paid laundromat in the basement, with a small library of books to keep you occupied. All in all a civilized and painless way to do laundry!

Next job - get some household items for the apartment and Jane who is coming to visit. The nearest mall / department store to me is white plains, two train stops down the road. There are many department stores but nothing is terribly enticing - the merchandising is tired and cramped, the most exciting thing about one department store was watching the in house detectives capture and frogmarch away a shoplifter still clutching his unpaid goods! Could it be the fiscal crunch, or the demographics of the suburb? I couldn't resist some spring tulips for the apartment as flowers make such a difference in making a place homely.

Lunch is at a NYC institution - Serafinas italian restaurant, old style service and food. I opted for a Bloody Mary and bowl of warming lentil soup!

I walked down to the village at night to use the Internet at Starbucks ! (I know!). There is even more shops and restaurants - some beautiful clothes shops, a middle eastern wine bar and a couple of very popular restaurants! That will be all I do night as the jet lag has caught up with me, but it has been a very satisfying first day in New York!