Once again a slow start to the day. Very overcast and a tad nippy. We jumped onto the train and headed to Time square for some last minute shopping.

Came home and prepared for the baseball game. James told us late that he could not make it as he had to prepare a presentation for tomorrow morning.

Bel and I hit the subway at peak hour and headed up town to the Bronx and Yankee stadium. Let’s call it organized chaos. Oh my god! 45 000 people rushing for their seats.

Once settled Bel grabbed us the mandatory beer and hot dog. Then game time. Was a good game and Bel made a friend with a old Yankee local.

Game was won by the Yankees 5-0 then mad dash for the subway. Now bed time!!!

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The boys were both a little dusty in the morning and they reluctantly got up and checked out of the hotel and headed out for some breakfast at our now familiar Le Pain Quotidien.

Instead of waiting for our bus to arrive, we headed up to Georgetown in a taxi to head out for a cruise in the river. Shaky little boat with very smelly toilets that almost overcame all of us! But it was a chance to see all of the monuments we had seen the previous days from a different perspective.

With the hour long cruise at an end, we waited for our hop on, hop off to arrive, which should have been around 15mins. After waiting over 1/2 hour, we decided to put our theory to the test -’l bet that if we hail down the next cab our bus will arrive’. Sure enough, that is exactly what happened but we opted to go with the cab anyway as we had lost enough time.

From union square station again for a quick bite of lunch, we then walked across to the Capitol Building again which we couldn’t get into as it was closed, which unfortunately is the case for most of Washington on Sundays. It did give us a chance to walk around and check out lots of architecture though from the grand Public Library to the High Court.

From there we walked through the mall again and down to the Modern & Contemporary Art Museum. We started in the West Building and then went underground on an amazing light fantastic moving walkway and tunnel to get to the East Building. Skipping past the sculpture garden and a disabled protest (that had shut down the white house the day before), and we hopped onto one of the last buses for the day we were able to check out Chinatown, before making the trip back to Dupont Circle for some well deserved beers. We then had a light meal before grabbing our bags from the hotel and heading back to Union Station to await our train back to NYC at 8.45pm.

An uneventful journey ride back, (with Bel beating John again at battleship, although she did let him have one so that he would play again another day). Arriving into Penn Station at 12.15am, it was a quick taxi home and straight to bed exhausted!

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After an amazing nights sleep in our King sized bed (poor James on the sofa bed) we started the day slowly. It was our intention to get up at the crack of dawn but no…. After showers we headed down to Le Pain Quotidien (French café) for brekky. We all had omelettes, coffee and tea for myself.

It was a glorious day, warm and sunny. We had decided to jump on the Yellow hop-on-hop off busses. If you are ever in DC these are the way to travel. $40 for 48 hours, you could jump on and off at any of the stops and also included a boat cruise (more to come on that harrowing experience later). The yellow line ran thru Georgetown and the Cathedral tour. Lucky for us there was a stop on Dupont circle so we hopped on. After dodging many low hanging branches we were in Georgetown. If you can imagine Woollahra on steroids…. Lovely town with shops from nick nacks to larger chain stores like GAP and A&F, of all the places we have seen this trip we both agreed that this town was the closest fit to us. How ever we would need to sell the girls into the SE Asian slave trade to buy a house…

The bus stopped on the edge of the Mall (park) and we walked across to the Natural History Museum. It was packed. We commenced our scrum forward to the Dinosaurs. While they were all very interesting, up close and personal, I didn’t get into it. You seem to get quite blasé about them after a while – oh look – there are some more old bones…. Arhhhh… I kept myself interested by looking for all the dinos and animals from the movie Iceage. This kept me busy for a good 20 minutes.

Following the Dinos we wandered thru the Ocean area and then to lunch in the overpriced “cafeteria”. A turkey roll later we search out the Hope Diamond. The Hope Diamond is 45 carats of deep blue diamond. It is blue to the naked eye because of trace amounts of boron within its crystal structure. It is famous for supposedly being cursed, and it has a long recorded history with few gaps in which it changed hands numerous times on its way from India to France to England and to the United States. It has been described as the “most famous diamond in the world” and, after the Mona Lisa, it is the second most-visited artwork in the world. It came to France from India in the early 1600’s, so an pretty old rock.

There were also other gemstones and famous pieces of jewellery on display – very pretty! After the hope diamond we headed off to walk around the White House.

Walking down the Mall towards the Washington Monument, James decided to walk on the grass at the base of the stone behemoth even though it was obviously closed and “out of bounds”. After one photo he was chased off by a police man. To the copper dismay MANY people had followed suit on the other side of the monument and the police man then had the real shits…

We wandered to the White house an took some photos on the south lawn. Once again we got moved on by the local constabulary. “This area is Closed” – we did however get a few good shots in. It is a very impressive building and you can see how other countries heads of state can feel intimidated entering the place.

Walking around the WEST WING to the other side of the White House you get a much closer and upfront view. Few protesters and what not but all in all an impressive building.

Rather than jump on the bus again we decided, to Bels dismay, to walk back to the hotel. On and guess what!!! ???? James bed was packed away! Seriously….. We got changed and had a few beers at The Dupont Bar before heading out to eat at Circa. Nice place, around the corner. Prices were $25-sh for a main. The killer is not being BYO! The grog costs the bomb when you are drinking liberally. We had a waiter that must have had a silver spoon well and truly shoved up his clacker. He was so pretentious it was ridiculous. At one stage he reached to get a plate and said “excuse me for the reach” – of coarse I said “your welcome for the reach”. This gent also had a little shadow, a new guy learning the ropes. As the night wore on we tended to gravitate to this new guy as he had some personality and if your paying 20% in tips you want to have some fun. We were boring and all had the New York strip steak – was the best piece of meat I have had here so far.

Well the night started to get rowdy and Bel decided to head off home early, im sure to hog the huge king sized bed, whilst James and I stayed to knock off another bottle of pinot and really annoy the locals. After about 15 minutes (it could have been more I don’t remember!!) a girl at the table beside us turned and asked us if “we were together”! Now im in a merry state I don’t quite recall my reply or the intention / inference of the question. Needless to say James and I spent the next half an hour taking the piss out of her, she was “quite annoying” as James put it. We got bored and headed for home. However on the way we did get distracted calling people “LADIES!!!!!” (if you know little Britain you will get it) and then took a personal guided tour of the Washington Metro (subway) – basically wandered down the longest escalator I have ever seen and wandered around.

Eventually got home (I think it was 2am) Bel was asleep and took me 20 seconds to be off with the pixies too.


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It is in High Def if you want to change the settings on the bottom.

Posted from New York, New York, United States.

Down time today. Slept in then i went to a meeting with Chelsea Wine Storage around the block. They store wine just like me but don’t have the added frills and their software is quite old. Interesting site in the basement of the old Nabisco factory under the current Chelsea market.

Bel did some washing then we went out for subway for lunch and were going to head to the river for a walk but unfortunately it started to rain. Headed home and watched some riveting TV then went out for some Thai at Room Service around the corner. Bit disappointed as it wasn’t as good as last time. Now we are home packing to head off to Washington tomorrow.

Very lazy day…

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Big day of walking. Jumped on a number of trains and made it to the Park where the Metropolitan Museum is. Gorgeous building and HUGE. We hit the Egyptian exhibit first. It is quite amazing that you are looking at so many artefacts that are over 3000 years old. Many other exhibits, ancient Roman and Greek art, sculptures and pottery. The modern artwork was interesting, quite a few Picassos but not really my thing. After 5 hours pounding the floor we headed back down the park to the subway.

Once home I had a meeting with an old mate who is working here for Lion Nathan and also a Sonoma winemaker down at Dublin 6 in West Village. Was only about a 15 min walk so easy to get there. After a few beers I headed off to get home by 8 so that we could go to dinner with James and Gary. Turned out that Bel was up the road having a mani, pedi and massage. James and Gary were home when I got back, Bel followed shortly.

We jumped in to a cab and headed across town to lower east village to Sushi Cube. Nice place, good food and great to meet Gary. Worked our way home passing past Katz Deli then to bed.

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Well James was off to work early this morning. Bel and I woke, had some eggs and tea then headed off down town.

We got the sub way down to the financial district and jump on the Stanton Island ferry. It is a free service that links Manhattan with Stanton island. There was a bit of a rumble trying to get to the top deck and get on the right side as you passed by Statue of Liberty. Once we arrived on the island we turn straight around and returned to Manhattan. Grabbed a sandwich and sat in Battery park watching the squirrels.

Bel decided to duck into Century 21. This is basically a multilevel discount department store. Grabbed some MORE stuff and we headed home on a VERY VERY packed rush hour train.

Tuesday night we had decided to have a quiet night in but ended up on the upper east side at a Pizza place called Bettola (highly recommend it). Lovely neighbourhood, very suburban feel of young families and young professional couples. Food was quite good too. Finished up with a stroll down to the river and had one last beer at the Boat Basin Cafe unfortunately Samuel Adams Beer was not to our taste but the only thing left at that hour of night!

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Very walkie day today. We head off at midday (James took the day off work) and head up town on the subway. We arrived at 42nd street and walked down Times Square. Very busy and very colourful. After a few photos and bargaining with a sales assistant in a camera shop for a lens cap we headed across town with sandwiches in tow to central park.

HERE IS A LINK TO HALF OF THE WALK WE DID FROM MY CYCLE AP

We visited the FAO Schwartz toy shop and the Apple store then had lunch in the plaza. After lunch walked thru the Plaza Hotel and thru the park. Central Park is awesome. Humungous! Many photos and an ice-cream we ended up at the reservoir and then walked down 5th Avenue to the subway.

Dropped in at a local Mexican restaurant The Rocking Horse for several frozen margaritas and guacamole. After which we headed to little Italy for a feed. OH MY GOD! This was the worst SHIT ever. Got stuck in a total tourist trap. Shit food, shit service, wine that was 3 years past it and then the bastards had the gaul to add a mandatory 20% tip to the bill. James arked up along with a German tourist. After a “lessoned learnt” we jumped in a cab and headed home.

Many KM’s under the belt and sore back we are home and looking forward to a good sleep (on a blow up mattress? Yeh good luck)

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This video is taken from a walk way within the World Financial Centre building. It looked like hundreds to police cards with their lights on in procession. On talking to a guard he said it was a trial run for the following days ceremonies. Impressive non the less.

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