008 - mon 08/05/2006 - new york

we had by this stage assembled a fair number of pamphlets, maps and guides. we had even borrowed a book from the front desk, a rough guide guidebook from 2002, which we were becoming pretty reliant on. in there it mentioned a farmers market at nearby union square. we grabbed some fresh fruit for breakfast, picked up a pizzette thing for lunch. i was desperate for coffee, and we'd had such poor luck so far finding a decent coffee in either los angeles or new york, that i actually went to starbucks. actually, in new york i think its hard not to go to starbucks, because basically every second store is starbucks so you will inevitably accidentally order a coffee from there, like when you are trying to get a ticket for the subway, or perhaps find a public toilet, and then oops, somehow i've ordered a decaf double espresso macchiato, on ice, with cream, or something, from starbucks. unsurprisingly, the coffee wasn't great, and we didn't go back to starbucks. this galvanised my desire to find good coffee in new york.

we caught the subway to the east village. the book described the east village as "one of New York's most vibrant neighbourhoods, with boutiques, thrift stores, bars and restaurants" - which seemed to be the description (and accurately so) for many of the neighbourhoods in Manhattan. we really liked east village, although it took us a bit of walking to find what we were looking for. we did end up walking down some great side streets, with some really great looking clothes shops and antique stores. the only problem was that they were mostly shut. at first we thought this could be because it was monday, but on closer inspection most of the stores had opening hours that began at around 1 or 2pm, and it was only noon at this stage. it was a bummer for us, but it made a lot of sense - even on more major streets it seemed that a lot of the stores didn't open until 11 or later, and most would stay open some time past dark. we decided that east village was perhaps best enjoyed after dark.

we headed for times square. we had to be at the ed sullivan theatre by 2pm to pick up our tickets. oh did i forget? we had gotten tickets for letterman the day before, courtesy of a message left at our hotel. so we had woken up monday morning pretty excited, and we only got more excited when we found out (via myspace no less) that andrew had popped the question to robyn and that she had said yes (two of our mates). so yeah today was a good day. after picking up our tickets we went back to central park to quickly gobble down the pizza we'd got at the farmers market that morning, and then it was time to line up for letterman.

letterman was ace fun. it was pretty intense. i won't do a blow-by-blow now, but i'll try and remember the finer details if anyone is interested when i get back. the show itself was a bit workman-like, if you are a regular letterman watcher you'll know that there are great shows and then there are shows that everyone is kind of on autopilot for. the lead guest was a baseballer which made it a little more uninteresting for us. derek jeter. and no rupert, and no crazy alan kalter antics. but still fun, and possibly even more surreal than disneyland.

after the show we had to get hot dogs from the nearby hot dog stand. awesome. then it was time to head back to the east village and celebrate our afternoon with dave. we leafed through to the bars section of our trusty book, picked out any that sounded good that were kind of between the east village and where we were staying, and then jotted them all onto our map. so we then had a route with which we could bar-hop back to our hotel. on the way we had a lot of drinks, met a lot of cool bartenders (all of them foreign seemingly), and even had new york's best dumplings.

click here to view photos from this day