Our final day in NYC was a fairly wide-ranging one across three of the five boroughs. First - the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in Manhattan. There was quite a few cool exhibitions here- Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol stuff was all good,and there was a great exhibition of Salvador Dali's surrealist paintings so it was well worth the visit, although two art museums in a week has exhausted Matt's ability to look at paintings for quite some time!

Art really works up an appetite for hot dogs - so we rode the subway for over an hour to reach "Nathan's Famous" - the original New York hot dog stand in Coney Island (in Brooklyn). Worth the journey, as was the 'medium' cup of home made lemonade. We could only assume if we had ordered a large we would have been presented with a bathtub full of the stuff - American portions are ridiculous. Staten Island was technically our first beach of the adventure, but as the beach itself was covered in broken glass and rubbish it doesn't count, we also gave the 80 year old wooden rollercoaster a miss; after our rather large lunch I don't think the beams would have held out.

Queens was the third NY borough of the day - for Shea stadium, home of the New York Mets. We got into the spirit of things with a caps, tshirts, bucket sized beers and nachos (the most disgusting thing we have ingested so far - one pot of sauce = salsa, no problem here, the next pot however appeared to be those dirty cheese slices you get from tescos for 10 pence all melted down together and plopped in a pot - essentially a melted rubbery heart attack).

American sports banter is pretty strange - firstly the crowd don't start their own chants. but rely solely on the PA system to tell them what to sing, and the inter-fan banter was very amusing; as the Mets were playing their rivals the Phillies any away fan was bombarded with insults the moment they came in sight by Macho guys trying to impress their girlfriends, but in a different way to home, not aggressive like at football, or in a joking friendly way like at rugby games, but a very unique type of jock talk which seemed to have nothing to do with the game, just who was a bigger 'p**** .

We left New York yesterday lunchtime, and arrived 6 hours later in San Francisco, and were picked up by U.S. Hartleys, who we are now staying with in Burlingame, just outside of the city. Last night we sat chilling drinking some Bud Lights watching UFC -, Kate loved it and is going to take it up as soon as we get back, and is especially keen to utilise the 'elbow-to-the-face-over-and-over-again-until-they-pass-out' move. This morning we are currently engrossed in The Mighty Ducks 2, team USA are about to win I believe (today is a chill day before we start exploring San Francisco tomorrow).

xxx

(written yesterday, internet only just started working)