You can always go downtown...

Justin is in San Fran and Josh and I are still in bed after a rather late night, it’s rainy and I have absolutely no inclination to get out of bed for a while, so I thought I’d write.  Now where were we?  Thursday.

On Wednesday night we made the decision to stop wasting our mornings and to get up before midday, so at about 9:30 we got out of bed, gathered our washing and went to the local Laundromat.  If you’re a regular reader, you’ll already know that while we waited for our washing we had breakfast at Aubergine and I wrote a blog.  Then we headed home to put our clean clothes away and get on with our exploration of the city.

 

A quick stop in midtown to buy tickets to American Idiot and we jumped on a subway downtown.  We wandered up Broadway and onto Wall Street, which is quite impressive, but not as long as I expected.  We turned into Broad Street, past the New York stock exchange (an imposing display of Americana) and went in search of the fabled “Wall Street McDonald’s”.  A McDonald’s restaurant rumoured to have table service and a grand piano.  Some Googling and wandering proved to us that this McDonald’s no longer exists, so we had Pret instead.

We continued down Wall Street towards the water where we spotted the Brooklyn Bridge and then made our way back up, across Broadway and towards the World Trade Centre site.  Right now, it’s a building site that doesn’t really stir a great amount of the emotion, but the preview site gives you some idea of what the eventual effect will be.  While we were in the visitors centre I started reading some poetry from a book called Bikeman by Thomas Flynn, a journalist who was present at the site on the day of the attacks.  It gave me goosebumps.  If you get a chance to read some, I strongly recommend it; it is a totally unique account.

We walked past the building site amid hordes of inner-city business-types and I guess you can’t help but wonder what it would have been like with all the panic and fear. 

Our next stop was the World Financial Centre a building that allows you to view Ground Zero on one side and shop at Gap on the other.  It’s quite a spectacle of a building on the inside, all marble and glass domes and giant palm trees.  We bought shakes from a gelato shop on the ground floor and sat in the sun by the water for a while.

Intelligently… or not, we decided to head back to midtown at 5pm, just when there is a mass exodus of work-weary people from the business district.  It was an interesting subway experience, well mostly unpleasant, but also great for a bit of eavesdropping.

Safely back in Times Square I hit MAC and Walgreens to replace my make-up, all of which seemed to run out at once.  MAC is so cheap here, $14 mascara, that is an absolute miracle.  My cheaper Cover Girl foundation however, is about the same price at home, so that was less exciting.

Then after about an hour sitting in a somewhat grimy, touristy café, Justin went home and Josh and I went to see American Idiot.

90 minute show, no interval, constant energy.  This show was absolutely brilliant, thus far the best thing I have seen on Broadway.  Ok, so the message is pretty much, “make whatever choice you like you’ll screw it up and end up back in your hometown anyway”, but this is one of the most unique and incredible pieces of theatre (and example of storytelling) I have ever seen.  And the lighting was amazing.  And the finale… was actually one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  I don’t want to give it away, but if you choose to try and find it on YouTube, I can’t stop you.  See this show (if you can), this one made me cry with actual emotion, not just spontaneous musical theatre tears and it left me totally buzzed.

And then, as at the end of each day, we made our way back to our tiny room for fun and silliness before bed.

Miss you all lots today… Love, Jules xx