New York: Day 10 & 11 Upper West Side

Hi everyone, Cara and Polly here again with day 10 and 11 of our New York blog. Day 10 was our move to an apartment on the upper west side to live like real New Yorkers! We did it the easy way and hailed a yellow cab as it would have been too hard getting our luggage there on the subway. Mind you, we had such a crazy taxi driver the subway would have been safer! Our apartment is on the corner of Riverside Drive and 85th street and is really comfy. With each accommodation move we gain more space - including our own bathroom which we've had to share up till now. It's also so nice to have a kitchen to cook in as we are getting a little sick of eating out all the time. Our apartment has a beautiful view of the Hudson River which looks over to New Jersey and, wow, the view is spectacular at night! How lucky are we?!





After settling into our new home and doing a big grocery shop at Zabars (Harry/Dad you would love it!) we decided to get some fresh air and took a lovely stroll from 85th st along the boardwalk to 69th st as the sun was setting behind New Jersey. Then we walked back via Broadway to make a yummy home-made dinner of pasta with pesto sauce and garlic bread AND wine! We haven't been doing a lot of 'drinking' so we pushed the boat out that night and used the whole bottle up!

Day 11: Woo hoo, sleep-ins are back on!! Once we finally got up and ate (oh, and watched couple hours of very addictive American tv!) we headed off to explore beautiful Central Park. This place is truly amazing and so beautiful. Oh and you could very easily get lost if you're anything like Cara (no sense of direction!) as it is so huge with lots of different paths in every direction and not many signs. We've become a little besotted with squirrels too as they're so cute and bounce around the tree branches so quickly.
















After we made it through the park and out the other side into the upper east side we did a little shopping at Bloomingdales, Dylan's Candy Store, Tiffany's and the very cool toy store FAO Schwartz. Polly spent up big at the candy store (no one's surprised by that!) and Cara bought herself a special souvenir pendant necklace from Tiffany's (incredible place). What we constantly find is the amazing customer service and friendliness of shop assistants. These New Yorkers are a real friendly bunch and also very helpful with answering our many questions. They're also incredibly polite and have such good manners.









By the time we decided to head home it was 6.30pm (shops stay open so late each night) and it was dark. We were at 60th street and had to get back to 85th so we quite bravely (or maybe foolishly) walked some of the way thru Central Park - in the dark remember!? Once again friendly and helpful New Yorkers assisted with directions when we needed to double-check Polly's internal compass was pointing in the right direction so we didn't get too lost!

On the way we kept stopping to admire the Halloween decorations people have put up. Some are definitely more scary than others!!


















After a quick stop at our local supermarket for dinner ingredients we (well, just Polly actually) got home just in time to watch the American broadcast of rugby world cup final All Blacks -v- France only about 16 hours after it was live in Auckland. Thank God the kiwis won or the All Blacks would have been hunted down and .... well, I hate to think!

Another home-cooked meal of Polly's corn chowder and we settled in for a few more hours of awesome American tv, ah, this is the life!