At the Manhattan end of the bridge

Suzanne: “I went to a Seussical”

I collected my last New York City borough: the Bronx. Before we went there, we had a day on Museum Mile and Central Park.

A relaxing bus ride took us to the Upper East side. Suzanne went to the Jewish Museum, I went to the National Design Museum. We went into Central Park – hoping for a place to have lunch as well as to experience the views.

The Reservoir was very calm.

Sadly, the food selections we found weren’t so great. There were a few snacks at the tennis club, there was less at the nearby recreation centre. We bridged the gap with a banana each and made our way back to Central Park East and the Guggenhiem.

Looking up from the ground floor

Only performance art was missing – until we turned up

A piece that encouraged people to dance

As we left, I saw that New York’s outsourcing has gone a lot further than I imagined:

Although we had a nice snack in the GuggCafé, we decided to follow a tip from Jenn: Little Italy in the Bronx. The trip started smoothly. The express subway train arrived quickly. We got up to 180th street easily. Although we seemed to miss two buses, another came two minutes later. Then there was a little wrinkle: we were told to go to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx to try some of the best Italian food in New York.

When we got off the bus, we found that Arthur Avenue was a back street in a poor area. We weren’t dressed correctly for this excursion. As I caught a bit too much sun yesterday, I was wearing trousers and a shirt for the first time in 40 days. Suzanne was covering up too. We felt more out of place than we wanted to be.

We walked four or five blocks south. We ran into a park. We asked advice in a local eatery. We had turned the wrong way a few blocks earlier. Luckily the correct northbound bus was there for us. A few blocks later, we were in Little Italy in the Bronx. Not long after that I sat down to a big plate of pasta:

Later we got a cab to the local overground line and soon found ourselves at Grand Central Terminal:

Suzanne: “Mum, I won’t go to the Bronx”

On the way out to Coney Island

Suzanne and I took the opportunity to go out to Coney Island. It seems as if developers are going to turn this old-style funfair resort into a slightly sanitised tourist destination.

They’ll keep some of the rides, add some hotels and expensive accommodation, and clean up some of the odder aspects. I’d be suprised if the new security arrangements will allow the following:

As we were walking along the pier, we saw some people making some links for film about strange tales of Coney Island. If this were happening in a couple of years time, it could be that CCTV cameras would see the odd goings and send security to move these people along. ‘We can’t have odd people spoiling the holiday experience for our valued tourist customers.’

The host of the film was ‘The World Famous *Bob*’ – a burlesque performer. Suzanne and I were a little shy of taking pictures of the shoot, but Val Killmore, the director asked us if we could take pictures for them. They had forgotten to bring a camera.

Suzanne said that this building looked ‘dramatic’

The big wheel where the cars swing in loops as they go around.

The closest thing to an old-time funfair stall: on a disused patch of ground between to buildings on the broadwalk – an opportunity to shoot paint pellets at a live human target. We asked why we should want to shoot at the quiet young man who was sitting there. The barker replied: ‘If you were down there, he would shoot you!’

Later we walked on to Brighton Beach, which was more genteel by the sea, with a much busier Russian high-street. We went on to Alphabet City for a lovely meal with production copmany maven Jenn.

Suzanne: ‘Is it a rat garden?’