I always seem to be eating and drinking when i write these blogs. This time i'm in a nice harbour side restaurant called il Porto in lower Manhatten which i walked past the other day and decided to come back to. Its rather spoilt on this occassion however, due to loud basey music coming from some DJ'ing entertainment down the road. Still, the sun is shining and i have a cold beer in my hand so it's all good.

I took a walk down Broadway this morning on my way here and past the Bowling Green Bull, a 7000 pound bronze statue of a charging bull worth over 6million dollars. Anyone can buy it, under the agreement they have to keep it where it is. There were crowds of people around it, a lot totally abusing its arse end for photographic comedy value. If only they knew there was a pretty similar one outside the Bull Ring in Birmingham which I suspect is worth a hell of a lot less!

I took a walk over Brooklyn bridge after lunch which was longer than I predicted it to be. The sun was beating down but there was a nice breeze making 35 degrees feel more like 30. I had beautiful views of the river and New York, as well as a teeny Statue of Liberty in the distance. I didn't venture in to brooklyn through fear of getting lost as well as having aching feet and no clue where to visit so I returned back over the bridge stopping once for a sit down and to down a bottle of water.

I stopped off at City Hall Park. A small park but a nice one, with a smart water feature in the middle of it. I stopped here for half an hour to rehydrate and do a bit of people watching, and then spent 15 minutes trying to flag a taxi back to the hotel. Flagging taxi's in NYC really isn't as easy as it looks in the movies! I thought you just had to do a loud whistle and wave your hand in the air and one would appear. Apprarently not!

I got a quick bite for dinner before heading out to see the Broadway hit musical 'Mary Poppins'. My concierge at the hotel managed to get me a ticket for the second row back from the front! Paid a small fortune for it but well worth it! It was a magnificant show with Tap dancing on the ceiling, random things coming up from the floor and and Mrs P flying in to the audience. Fabulous! Chatted to a nice chap from California in the intermission who was there with his two daughters. He was very interested in learning about all the Royals and was hugely excited about the fact I had met three of them. This then led to the topic of accents and three people sitting around us got involved, asking me if I thought the the English accents in the show were convincing. Mary's was as she is an English actress. The others where somewhat questionable, as was d*** Van Dykes!

Finished the day by strolling (or rather trying not to trip over people) through Times Square. A whole different experience at night. Lights, people, flashy things in every direction! Can't wait for Vegas now! Took a long walk back to the hotel in heels. Fail! Was almost tempted to walk through the New York streets bare footed but thought better of it! The main thing i love about New York is that you can go out night or day without a map or GPS and always find your way to where you want to go. None of this 'take a left when you get to The Plough then right at Broad St crap'. Much more sensible! Empire State building tomorrow then off to meet the Trek America gang!