who said it was going to be cold in new york? apart from one day of torrential rain, we have been blessed with beautiful weather on our trip here. conducive to lots of walking, which is excellent - though i wouldn't go as far as to say i'll come back from this trip any thinner... oh well. today, our final new york day, we spent most of it in the museum of natural history. what a great museum - lots of very interesting things to see. we then went back to times square to take in a final show - and what a show it was! caled drumstruck, it was a show with audience participation - there was a djembe on every seat. i know, trust us hippies to find the one show with drumming in it... actually i had read about it online before we left melbourne, but i didn't realise that it would still be running. great show, drummed like crazy, and had a ball. then we went to madame tussad's wax museum and marvelled at just how short shakira is in real life, and how tall elle macpherson is. they even had the spice girls (minus ginger, unfortunately - but not to worry, i stood in for her and the other girls didn;t seem to mind at all).
friday we wandered through central park for most of the day - mark got hit on the head by an acorn - it made a distinctive popping sound on contact. after he got over the initial shock, we both couldn't stop laughing, imagining a chubby-cheeked squirrel punching the air and going 'yesss!' while high-fiving his other squirrel-buddies... i still think they're cute, though. then we saw a turtle sunning itself on a rock, watched as a group of boys trying to terrorise it, then cheered quietly as it scratched one of them before plonking back into the water. we rode the carousel to the tune of 'down town' - all very meg-ryanesque, really. speaking of tom hanks, we then wandered into f.a.o. schwartz, the toy store with the piano from the movie 'big'. in the queue for the ladies, i saw something very disturbing - two tween girls with mini designer handbags - one pink prada and one brown chanel.
on friday night we went to dinner at a friend's house - we actually met them at the melbourne writers festival last year. ron mclarty and his wife kate threw a little party for us, and kept introducing us as 'the guests of honour' - one could get used to such treatment! it was fab to meet so many new and interesting people, and to know the heels i brought along got at least one good run out of the bag. we chatted and laughed into the wee hours, and came back to the hostel feeling very special indeed. thank you ron and kate for a very lovely evening!
other celebrity sightings-in-the-wild - i think i saw john mcenroe the other night, and mark saw danny from the partridge family earlier this evening.