Coming up for air

Sorry for not writing sooner... but wow... busy is an understatement... the past 7 days or so have been a bit of a whirlwind as I've been sucked in to the after work life of manhattan... I've danced away on a harbour cruise at night, seen Hair the musical out in the open at Central Park, rooftop drinks x 2 (some apartments here have amazing rooftops!!), had a quirky night out to see some live bands, been to coney island, park slope, the US Open and of course whats a week without my favourite (sorry thats favorite) dumplings.. had them too... and in all that somewhere I also went to work...
Best part of the week was probably seeing Hair, it is it put on by the public theatre who run an event every summer called 'shakespeare in the park'... I know, Hair isnt shakespeare but it had some connection.. i don't really know... anyway they give away the tickets for free each day, but as you can imagine the queues are enourmous and people get there at 2am when the box office only opens at 1pm and the show at 8! Being as resourceful as we are, some friends and i found people selling tickets online, they queue in the line all day and night for you, you give them $50 and you get tickets! worked perfectly, the show was amazing, i think being in the middle of the park at night added to it as well as the beautiful castle in the middle of central park behind it (at first i thought it was part of the set... but its an actual castle in the park, ill have to check it out in daylight.) I took a photo of the musical but got in trouble, no photos allowed! the security guard stood there and made me delete it!!

Coney Island was also great... first day really out of manhattan...its a small beach suburb with a massive boardwalk along the beach and sideshows and a theme park with rides, the most amusing part being the 'shoot the freak' sideshow... a guy stands about 20 yards away (notice im saying yards...) and you get to aim at him with a paintball gun, if you hit him you win a prize.. he dodges behind his little sheild.. weird message i think, but it is america :) theres lots of russians down there, fat kids, and greasy food. highlight of the place.. there is a man outside the public toilets whose job is to sit all day on a chair with a power hose and he washes the sand off your feet and thongs after you leave the beach... genius. On the way home we went via park slope a great little suburb in brooklyn, very 'young families with little children' type place, but beautiful tree lined streets full of pretty brownstone apartments... very quaint and un-manhattan like!

Another great part of the week was the US Open! I love going to the tennis and Nadal and Venus were great to see live.. vocal americans make for a humourous atmosphere... (can an atmosphere be humorous?).. as do the security restrictions in the city... i wasn't allowed to take my back pack in as it had two straps!! I could take the same size bag in though if it had one strap.. she couldnt explain to me why so I told her to cut one of the straps off... nope... she didnt like that... I had to go to the back of the line put my bag in a locker and carry around a plastic bag all day.. grrr.

Last night I caught up with Dave and Gail (friends from Sydney) was really good to see familiar faces, we went to a funny little bar with singing bartenders :P They're here for the week so Im sure I'll be seeing lots of them.. I get to play tour guide.. loving it :)