006 - sat 06/05/2006 - new york

when we had arrived at ye olde carlton arms the previous night they'd asked us to choose a room, but they didn't have many to choose from because we had arrived late. all of the rooms in the hotel are painted by local artists who do themed murals, you can see them here. we had picked 12A, not for the artwork but because it had a window - but by saturday morning we had realised that the window opened directly above the pizza joint below. when we woke up, the air was thick with the smell of pizza. it was like inhaling breakfast, greasy cheesy pizza. we moved upstairs to room 1B - putting another floor between us and mike's pizza.

we explored midtown. manhattan is divided up into a number of different districts, which we quickly became familiar with. you might want to google a map of manhattan, if you can find a good one let me know and i'll link it up. we walked from our hotel up to grand central station and the chrysler building, wandered down fifth avenue. we ate lunch opposite old guys playing chess in bryant park, one of many open grassy squares that interrupt the endless rows and columns of high-rise blocks. from there we went to times square, which is a messy sea of people, billboards and bright lights. we saw a toys r us store which had a ferris wheel inside it. we walked up broadway, heading into the theatre district, and decided that we should definitely see a broadway show before the end of the week. we walked past 'the color purple', where some american out-of-towners had stopped to take a photo of the theatre, although not the whole theatre, just the part of the sign that said "oprah winfrey".

right next to 'the color purple' we found the ed sullivan theatre, the home of letterman. we had applied for letterman tickets online when we were still in melbourne but hadn't heard anything, so things weren't looking great. as we walked past we noticed that the box office was open, so we went in and they got us to fill in an application form and tell them what we thought of the show. our names were entered into the ballot and they sent us on our way, but then suz remembered something that she wanted to let them know about. on the show, they have a segment called 'stump the band' where audience members try to stump paul shaffer's band by requesting songs that they never would have heard of, like school songs or team chants, songs they made up when they were kids. thinking that it might increase our chances of making it into the audience, suz went back to the box office and serenaded them with her rendition of 'i'm a koala', a song she invented with zoe some years ago:

i'm a koala, i'm a koala
in the bush you'll find me there
i'm a koala, i'm a koala
and i'm not a bear.

the producer guy seemed impressed, it got a laugh. we were now sure we would get to see letterman. you can't argue with 'i'm a koala'.

after a bit more wandering we ended up at a vietnamese place near our hotel for dinner.

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