Blog 6 - El Volcan Conchagua: The Kindness of Strangers

Ultimately I decided on the title ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ because of three events you will hear about shortly, but it was a close call between that and a number of alternatives: ‘Oops I did it again…’, or even ‘Cerberus: Guardian of Amapalita’. Anyway, all will become clear soon.

If you don’t like spoilers then ignore this link to our previous travel blog from a couple of years ago, but for those of you who do remember it, todays Volcano adventure follows an eerily similar pattern…

So, I’d decided I wanted to climb this volcano which overlooks the Gulf of Fonseca, a bay dotted with
islands on the border between El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Becki in her infinite wisdom, preferred to spend her last day at La Tortuga Verde relaxing on the beach and sorting out bits and pieces for the next stage of our trip, so after an interesting Salvadorian breakfast of; Scrambled Eggs, Fish Fillets, Fried Bananas, Re-fried Beans and Cheese I set off by myself to make my way to the volcano.

El Volcan Conchagua is about 30km from La Tortuga Verde so the first stage was simply getting to the main road where I could catch a bus. Just over 2 miles according to the map, no problem. What the map neglected to mention (yes, definitely the map’s fault) was; this 2 miles was entirely up hill, and entirely without any shade. After a few baking minutes walking by some chickens, cows and a pig who were all just milling around, a group of locals returning from their morning wood chopping session took pity on me and gave me a lift in their truck the rest of the way to the main road - Kindness of Strangers Take 1.

So, now all I had to do was wait for a bus, although the group of locals who had already been waiting for over an hour didn't fill me with confidence. Apparently; the Sunday bus service, not exactly reliable. Seeing as one advantage of El Salvador buses is you can just stop them and get on anywhere, and one disadvantage of being me is I can’t stand still waiting for too long; I decided the best thing to do was just start walking along the route to Conchauga.

After about 30-40 minutes (and still no sign of a bus going in either direction), I passed by 3 men sitting out on the verge by the side of the road. We said hello to each other, and they asked where I was going. With my Spanish not good enough to explain I was going to stop the bus on route, I had to say I was walking to Conchauga, which they found hilarious, (“Silly Gringo, you cannot walk all that way”), still they wished me luck and I kept walking.

After another half an hour of looking over my shoulder at every sound of an approaching vehicle, and still no bus, I was starting to wonder how smart my decision had been. But suddenly, another local in a truck pulled over and told me to get in - Kindness of Strangers Take 2.  He drove me the rest of the way, while we argued over whose football team was having the worse season, him being a Liverpool fan vs my AC Milan, we decided to call it a tie.

So finally I was there. The climb up the Volcano was amazing; hard going, and very hot and humid throughout, but all that was offset by some incredible views: back inland a landscape of hills, valleys, mountains and volcanoes stretching off into the distance, to the east 3-4 large islands sitting in the gulf, and to the south views out into the Pacific.

There was also plenty of awesome nature to see closer by; I think the pick of the bunch was a crazy dragonfly creature with stick thin wings almost to the point of being invisible, except for these brightly coloured spheres on each wingtip. When it flies it looks like four differently coloured pin heads spiralling around each other.

Also I came across the biggest swarm of ants I have ever seen in my life, and not just regular ants, these were massive; easily 4-5 times the size of the regular black ants back home. The entire path, which was about 2m wide, was covered for a good couple of meters in front of me. I stopped with the intention of getting some close up Attenborough style video of the swarm in action, but no sooner had I turned on the camera when the ants started to swarm all over my shoes and up my legs. So what you have here is a few seconds of ants, followed by my calm manly panic at the idea being carried off and devoured by man-eating ants.  And by the way, over the next few minutes up the volcano, I did the maths, and if they had all got together they could definitely have carried me!

So all in all, so far pretty awesome, however I started to run into a bit more trouble on the way down. The main problem was, there is a very fine difference (read: no difference at all), between the areas of dense jungle which have been deliberately slightly cleared by man to make an unobtrusive path, and those areas of jungle which have been slightly cleared by the randomness of nature. The picture to the right for example, shows a legitimate path, can you spot where it is!

So on two occasions on my way back down, I followed a false path-like clearing, only to have it suddenly disappear. And I soon discovered once you’ve gone off the path, finding it again is not so easy.  First time I harmlessly wandered around in the undergrowth for 20 minutes before finding my way again. The second time however, I was not so lucky.

I hasten to add, after getting lost the first time, I vowed to pay close attention to any potential path options before me, and so had already decided to avoid a particularly thick and confusing part that I’d been through on the way up. Instead I was going to walk an extra mile along a small dirt road (which the path briefly crosses) to the next town along, Amapalita.

So thinking I was almost done, I turned the corner at the entrance to this small town, at which point a fairly large dog started to bark and then charge at me. And not in the kind of “I’m a dog and I’m defending my territory” kind of way, as they often do in these parts, but in a, “I have been bred to kill, and when I catch up with you, I’m going to eat you” way. Needless to say, I ran as fast as I possibly could back the way I came.

There was no other way around, so against my better judgement, I had to go back and search for, and subsequently fail to find the path I had previously chosen to avoid. So what followed was around 45 minutes of pushing my way into and then out of a ravine, a dry-river bed, and finally scrambling up a small cliff before I re-found the path. Well I say re-found the path; actually I startled a bemused Salvadorian farmer who had been busy collecting avocados, before a thoroughly exhausted Englishman pulled himself up over his cliff edge. Anyway he kindly gave me some much needed water, and pointed me in the right direction - Kindness of Strangers Take 3.

Finally I made it back to Conchagua, and was pleased to find a local Pupusa festival in full swing. Pupusas are El Salvador’s national dish, basically they are halfway between a tortilla and a stuffed crust pizza, and they are as good, if not better than they sound. Understandably these guys love them and they had a giant party to show it; families competing against each other with crazy flavours, a speed Pupusa making contest, a marching band, a bouncy castle, and TV crew to take it all in.

Refuelled and reenergised, I had one last venture to go; getting back home. Due to the extra time I spent being lost, and the aforementioned Sunday bus service, the only way back was to team up with some locals, who had been stranded at the Pupusa fiesta, to flag down an out of service bus and negotiate a lift to get us home (I’ll be honest, they did most of the negotiating).

Finally, and a few hours later than expected, I arrived back at La Tortuga Verde to find, not only has Becki organised everything for the next leg of our trip tomorrow, but also packed all our bags, and had a Chicken Burger ready and waiting for me! A bag-full of Awesome Wife bonus points have been duly awarded!

As it turns out the real danger was not to me trekking up a volcano, but rather to Becki staying at the beach. As we walked across the sand to our hostel bar, death in the form of a falling coconut missed her head by less than an inch! 

Blog 5 - RESPECT THE SEA!!!

On Saturday 8^th November we left San Salvador and took a local “chicken” bus to San Miguel.  From there, we hopped on another bus which took us through the mountain range to the ocean front town of El Cuco.  At one point the bus was struggling so much up the mountain that we were barely moving at all.  In fact, when we reached the top, the driver and a few of the locals whooped and cheered, which makes me think that perhaps the bus getting to the summit is somewhat of a rare occurrence.  We then hurtled down the other side of the mountain at top speed which was very exciting, and I’m sure completely safe.

Once we arrived in El Cuco we started to walk the 40 minutes to our hostel, La Tortuga Verde but soon managed to hitch a lift in the back of a pickup truck instead, which was far more enjoyable! Here we are enjoying the ride.

La Tortuga Verde is a beachfront hostel, yoga retreat and turtle sanctuary.  The owner buys hundreds of turtle eggs at a time on the black market to save them from being eaten.  He then hatches them and releases the baby turtles into the ocean.  When we arrived we found that we were just in time to help the latest hatchlings be released!  This was a really amazing experience, and you feel really responsible for the turtles you release.  Apparently however, only 1 in 100 turtles actually survive the journey out to seam which is a bit of a bummer.  I bet it’s my one that survives though.

We love this place – it has such a chilled atmosphere, with palm trees and hammocks everywhere and a view of the ocean wherever you may be.  Originally we had booked to stay here for three nights, but quickly extended it to nine nights the day after we arrived. Even though we have been here now for eight days, I’m able to condense all of our activities into one blog entry, as apart from one or two exceptions, the days have mostly followed a pattern of: eat breakfast, lie in hammock, eat lunch, swim in sea/bodyboard, eat dinner, drink cervezas!  So, I’ll just fill you in on any extras that weren’t covered in that last sentence.

La Tortuga Verde is on Intipuca beach, which is a hot spot for surfers; obviously this means that the waves are pretty big and powerful.  Now, I take my self-appointed role as “Frazier/Madge Family All Situation Health and Safety Rep” very seriously, and have always prided myself on having a “respect for the sea”, and thus not swimming when the tide is turning.  However, on Thursday the sun must have gotten to me, and I adopted Nick’s attitude of, “How dangerous can it really be?”  The answer – quite dangerous.  After 10 minutes of frolicking in the waves, we soon got caught in a riptide which had pulled us beyond the point where we could stand, and with every massive wave that crashed over our heads, we were being pulled further out to sea as it dragged back again.  Thankfully a few minutes later we had managed to fight our way back to shore, feeling thoroughly exhausted and quite a bit scared.  Lesson here: RESPECT THE SEA!!!

On one of our first days here, we learned that a pub quiz would be taking place at the bar that evening!  Obviously we were very keen as we do love a good quiz, even on the other side of the world.  Well, we went to the bar (early) and waited and waited for said quiz to start, and after an hour or so were informed that it would have to be cancelled as we were the only ones who had turned up!  To reward us for our keenness we were given the opportunity to go paddle boarding in the estuary for free the next day.  As paddle boarding is a sport which relies highly on a sense of balance, I left Nick to it and hung about on the shore, pretending (in my head) to be a CIA agent on a reconnaissance mission - We’ve been watching a great deal of spy-based drama “Homeland” in the evenings.

Now for the really exciting news:  Those of you who read our last blog from our travels a couple of years ago may remember that we encountered a series of doppelgangers along the way.  Well….we’ve found our first of this trip!  He has been named “Australian Greg”.  Greg Gaynor is a friend of ours from uni, and this lovely Australian man named Chris resembled him so much in facial features and mannerisms that I just had to take a photo of him for the blog.  For those of you who know Greg, here he is.

And finally – we went to a pool party last night (Saturday) and something very important happened:  After years and years of trying, a fellow guest at La Tortuga Verde managed to teach me to open a bottle of beer with a lighter!!! That’s something to tick off the bucket list.

As I’m writing this, Nick is walking up/down a volcano (on his own), so if he ever returns I’ll let him tell you all about that in the next entry.  Tomorrow morning we leave La Tortuga Verde and are journeying to Nicaragua through Honduras.

Here are some pictures of the beach to annoy you all…..sorry!!

Blog 4 - El Boqueron: Looking for the Giant

We decided after yesterday’s Tazumal excursion, today we would stay a little closer to home; a trip to the main shopping street, Boulevard los Heroes. Perhaps like me you would have thought walking the ½ mile or so, in a direct line between the University (near where we were staying) and the expensive shopping district of Boulevard los Heroes would be a fairly safe choice. It turns out not so much. Before we knew it we had definitely walked into the wrong part of town: some kind of slum maze, with buildings piled on top of one another and leaning together for support. They were literally so close together no light could get through. The trouble is once you’ve walked in, the paths all curve back on themselves or lead to dead-ends, so finding your way out is not so easy.

Fortunately we did make it through, found the beautifully air conditioned shopping mall and celebrated with a traditional Salvadorian breakfast…Subway!

Becki wanted to buy some loose cotton trousers, which turned into a bit of a mission because for some reason, no-one here seems to want to keep cool. The fashion for women being jeans or woolly leggings despite it constantly being between 25 and 35 degrees. Also, FYI – sunglasses: not a thing in El Salvador.

Next up we walked down to the National Palace. Built in 1905 after the previous one was destroyed by fire, and now being rebuilt again after sustaining significant damage in the 2009 earthquake.  

Now who am I to question the architects involved in designing such a grand building, but even so I don’t think the placement of that door would pass health and safety back in the UK!

We took in a couple more sights of the city; next door to the palace was the Cathedral de San Salvador, and just down the road the Plaza de Libertad - this was originally the central point of San Salvador, with a New-York style grid system of roads sprawling out from there.

Stopped at one of the market stalls on the way back to buy Becki a cap for our expedition tomorrow, which brings me to another question: If you have 8 stalls in a row, all selling the exact same selection of caps and hats for the exact same price, who are the people who decide it’s a good idea to open another stall with the exact same thing again right next door!

A quick side note: in our best attempt to keep our clothes clean, plus our water and other provisions for tomorrow cool, we improvised a fridge/laundry area in our room.

Day 5 in San Salvador – The Big Mouth

Next up, an expedition to the Parque El Boqueron, a national park just west of San Salvador centered around a massive volcano.

On the walk up to the top we came across this curious sign. Needless to say we did as we were told and kept our eyes peeled for giants throughout. It wasn’t long before we reached a platform on top of the caldera rim, giving us some amazing views across the whole volcano. 

The caldera, created by massive eruption 800 years ago, is over 5km around and about 400m deep. In fact the entire park is named after this immense feature; ‘El Boqueron’ meaning ‘big mouth’ in Spanish.

It used to be completely filled with a lake, but in 1913 there was a second eruption which boiled the lake away (that’s a hell of a lot of water!) and left the smaller caldera you can see in the picture below. The little one is called; ‘la Boqueroncito’ – yes you guessed it little mouth.

While we were taking in the amazing views, a flock of Great Black Hawks were circling around the rim, gliding effortlessly on the thermal updrafts coming from the (still active) volcano below. They did actually swoop by pretty close to us, and if we had a professional photographer with us you would now get an awesome picture like the one on the left, but we didn’t, and they were too quick for us to do anything but stare at them, so you get the picture on the right.

We walked around the upper caldera rim, going along stepped paths from one viewing platform to the next, and then started our descent down.

The hike to the caldera floor was pretty varied, sometimes an easy stroll but also difficult going at times. Quite early on we passed a sign telling us that we had passed the edge of the ‘official park’, and that the authorities of El Salvador took no responsibility for people who got lost on the way down, always an encouraging sign. 

Technically there was a path the whole way, but it was pretty steep in places, and not always obvious which was the right way to go.

There was plenty of nature to take in on the way; lots of little birds, butterflies in reds and yellows, and some pretty funky looking big, red, furry caterpillars.

When we looked back up from deep inside the crater, the clouds were moving overhead so quickly they looked like a time-lapse film. I guess this is also something to do with the thermals pushing the clouds aside much faster than they would otherwise be going. It was a strange experience walking down; the temperature, pressure and humidity all seemed to change quite quickly and left us with the odd sensation of being simultaneously hot and cold at the same time.

We stopped for some lunch and a rest before making our way back up. On the whole coming back up was much easier, since we didn’t need to spend so much time carefully shifting our weight and using up mental energy avoiding slipping, but the flip side was it was thoroughly exhausting!

Back up near the top we spotted an 'Agouti Paca', a kind of large rabbit like rodent, that lives in these parts. Well I say spotted, we caught a fleeting glimpse before it dashed off into the undergrowth.

After another adventurous bus ride; back down the volcano back to San Salvador, we arrived home, with barely enough energy to pack up our things before falling asleep. Tomorrow; on to somewhere new.

Blog 3 - Crazy Buses & Mayan Ball Games

We had an early flight out of New York, and after two quick flights and a short stop-over in Dallas we arrived in San Salvador. From the grey skies, cold winds, and rain we left behind we stepped out into the 30 degree heat and clear blue skies.

We jumped in a taxi to our Hotel: Villa Florencia. While Becki settled into the hotel I took care of the first order of business for English people arriving in a tropical climate: find some sun cream and water. With that out of the way, we went out for an explore together.

So we turned out of the hotel onto the nearest street and to put it mildly; it was hectic. Basically what they decided to do was take a regular sized street with enough room for one lane of traffic and a pavement each side, and instead decided to try and cram in two lanes of traffic, shops and cafes with tables spread out over the pavement, then two rows of market stalls each side, plus a few random people with carts of food winding their way through any gaps they can find. All the while everyone is shouting to get your attention, but curiously it seems no-one is actually buying anything.

We stopped at some guy selling fried chicken and turned down another street to continue our explore, and then another and another, but apparently this is what every street is like in San Salvador.

Day 2 - On today’s agenda; head out west of San Salvador to the visit the Tazumal Ruins.

On our way to the bus station, we stopped at a Cocina. These little half café/half someone’s garage things are everywhere, at least 3 or 4 on every street, they’re pretty strange but the food is pretty good too! We got ourselves a standard Salvadorian $2 breakfast of: a pork stir-fry/casserole, with rice, salad, these corn tortilla things and finished off with some watermelon. Now that’s what I call a breakfast!

Off we went on the bus to Santa Ana, another hectic giant marketplace of a town, before doing a quick change on to the crazy little local bus to Chalchuapa. There are no rules for these local buses, you can get on or off wherever you want, they just keep cramming people in until they’re hanging out of the sides, and any time you do stop people from the nearest load of market-stalls get on, and squeeze their way down the bus selling their wares. Now fair enough, you might be on a bus and think I could really go for a bottle of water, or a burrito, but I can’t say I’ve ever thought “you know what would be really useful on this bus journey, toothpaste”. So all in all, bus trips in El Salvador: quite an experience. But then they do only cost 18p to ride, so I guess it’s all good!

So far, so good, even with our limited Spanish we had successfully navigated the market-mazes and hectic bus system. However we than ran into the first instance of what would be a recurring problem in San Salvador: they don’t believe in any form of signs, directions, maps, or providing information online for anything remotely touristy. For example:

(1) is where the map says the Tazumal ruins are, (2) is where they actually are. Now in my book when the entire town is less than 2 miles across, being over half a mile out is pretty far out. Fortunately a perfectly balanced combination of wise directional deductions and blind luck led us to the Mayan ruins.

There’s no two ways about it; Tazumal ruins – pretty impressive. You’ve got a massive pyramid temple, which used to sit at the centre of a city-state at the Southern edge of the Mayan empire. This is surrounded by smaller temples and alters, one of which I was stood on top of while taking the shot below. Nearby to the temple are the stands for an ancient sports arena. The Mayans’ sport of choice was a ball game that was played with a big rubber ball (think of a cricket-ball sized version of the bouncy balls you used to win from arcades as a kid). The players wore these heavy stone belts, and the idea was to hit the ball using your hips. Apparently it was not uncommon for the losing side to be sacrificed to the sun god. So when a Mayan tells you the game has gone to ‘sudden death’, he really means it!

Headed back to San Salvador, in another instance of the grand Salvadorian joke of information for tourists, the one ‘Tourist Class’ bus, doesn’t stop in the bus station the same as all the others, but rather you have to guess at what random point on an unmarked road it will stop on. It was just starting to get dark and a mild sense of panic setting in, when we spotted it. And in fairness it was worth the wait, you can see Becki looking pretty pleased with her fully reclining air conditioned seat!

Blog 2 - NatWest: "The Helpful Bank"

So on Friday, I met Daisy for a boozy brunch.  I had Eggs Benedict (with ham, bacon, spinach, potatoes and vegetables!) and a couple of Mimosas. Nick went off on his own to explore the rest of Central Park.  Now, those of you who are familiar with our previous travelling adventures will know what a bad idea it usually is to let Nick go off on his own, with no way of contacting me to let me know he’s either:

1. Lost
2. Feels like going for a longer explore so will be late
3. Is actually lost, but pretends he isn’t by saying he feels like going for a longer explore so will be late.

Well, in this case he was just plain lost.  However, he only kept us waiting in the cold in the middle of the park for a mere half an hour, so we couldn’t get too angry. 

Then it was off to New Jersey with Daisy and our pirate costumes.  All shall become clear, don’t worry.  We got off the train at Hoboken rather than Newport and walked the rest of the way, so that we could see the beautiful views of Manhattan across the water at night. 

Once we got to Daisy’s apartment, we changed into our pirate costumes and Daisy got dressed up as a minion, and went upstairs to a different apartment to have pre-lash drinks with lots of Daisy’s Mountbatten friends.  We played a brilliant game called Cards of Humanity.  If you have not heard of this, then please look it up/buy it because it is seriously a lot of fun.  Then it was back on the train to NYC to get to the venue for the Halloween party we were attending. 

Once we arrived at the venue, which was basically a huge warehouse – it had a kind of Subdub feel to it (Leeds people will know what I’m talking about), we were pretty annoyed to find that we were going to have to join the mother of all queues to get in.  However, Daisy went and spoke to the security and told them how great we were and that we had VIP tickets etc, so we straight in we went!  After a couple of hours of partying it was 3am and we decided to call it a night.

On Saturday, Daisy’s sister and auntie arrived from England so our host was occupied all day.  This and the fact that the weather was awful, meant that we had a pretty valid excuse to just sleep off our hangovers for most of the day.  Now, last night Nick had attempted to use two ATM machines and was denied cash both times.  We figured out that stupid Natwest must have put a block on his account as transactions were showing up in USA rather than in England.  This would be all well and good had Nick not been into stupid Natwest before we left the UK, to explain that we were going to be travelling around various countries for the next 6 months, to avoid this from happening!  So, Nick phoned up stupid Natwest, the “helpful” bank, and they took off the block on his account. However they were unable to say whether or not this problem would continue to happen in every new country we visit.  So that’s just great! 

Sunday was our last day in New York, so we got the subway into Manhattan and tried to go back to that delicious salad place, Cosi, but alas it was closed on Sundays :-(  We found a kind of deli place instead which was ok, but definitely no Cosi.  After lunch we met up with Daisy and her family and went up the Empire State Building VIP style – this meant no queuing! Thanks Daisy!

Afterwards we said goodbye to Daisy (sob) and went to the restaurant in Macy’s for dinner to cheer ourselves up.  We then went to check out Times Square, which we both agreed looks a lot better in the films than in real life.  Nick bought six deep fried Oreos from a street vendor for his pudding.  He claims he tried to buy one but apparently they only sold them in batches of six.  Then it was back on the subway to the hotel to pack and get an early night ready to leave at 5.45am for La Guardia airport and our journey to San Salvador. 

Finally, I'll leave you with this picture of a man with a giant tennis racket.  

I know it looks like he's about to hit the woman with it, but they were actually having quite a pleasant conversation.

Nick's tales of San Salvador to follow in the next few days :-)

Blog 1 - The Americans Don't Do Breakfast

Here we go! So, Nick’s parents dropped us off at Heathrow at about 11.30pm ready for our flight at 2.30pm. A little premature, you might think? The reason for this early arrival was that Jonathan (Nick’s brother) had kindly booked us into the “No 1 Travellers Lounge” so that we could relax before our flight, away from all the riff-raff in the rest of the airport ;-) As well as the area for eating and drinking, the lounge comprised of a cinema, a games room, a spa, and even a room called “The Snug”, where weary travellers can have a sleep for an hour or two before continuing their journey!  I have to say, it was most enjoyable; we had lots of delicious free food, relaxed in comfy chairs and generally we felt very fancy.  I only hope that Jon has booked the same deal for us in all the other airports we will be visiting along our way…

Onto the flight now – the plane was one of those HUGE things with a bar, an upper deck etc.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to explore these areas as we didn’t pay all the mega dollars for First Class tickets.  On the upside, the area we were in looked just like the inside of the plane of off that Friends episode where they are all flying back from Barbados, and they have to keep swapping seats because of that whole Joey and Rachel, Ross and Charlie kissing incident.  So, I enjoyed that.  Anyway, seen as this was the longest flight either of us had been on, it passed surprisingly quickly.  Perhaps due to the mini TVs in the back of all the seats showing such classics as the below:

Even the food was pretty decent, much better than the standard plane fare we had been expecting.  About 20 minutes into the flight, an air hostess (or do you have to say “host” nowadays to be PC?) came over with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot which Nick’s parents had ordered as a surprise for us!  Well, this was lovely of them, and what made it even better was that after we had explained to the air hostess that it was our honeymoon, she brought us two complimentary glasses of champagne too!  After the glass each and the other two complimentary cans of beers each, we decided to save the bottle for NYC as due to the altitude we were already kind of tipsy.  

So we arrived into JFK and got a taxi to our hotel in Queens, and we were STARVING.  Nick went to find the nearest takeaway food, which was Subway (of course!)  We ate quickly and fell asleep pretty much instantly.

The next day (Thursday) we went down ready to fill our bellies with a classic American Breakfast.  To be fair to the Americans, I don’t think we really knew what we were expecting, but it was definitely something better than this: Bread, un-spreadable butter and a small selection of highly sugar-based cereals. We discovered later that the Americans are actually more of the “brunch types” and that hotel breakfasts aren't really a big thing over there. 

Off we went into Manhattan to find sustenance of some kind.  We found an AMAZING place called Cosi in the Rockefeller Centre.  It basically does the best salads in the entire world, and they are properly huge portions too!  For those of you who care, I had a salad consisting of Gorgonzola, Grilled Chicken, Bacon, Peppers and Tomatoes….mmmmmmm.  Nick had some kind of sandwich – I don’t know, I was too engrossed in my salad.  We then went for a lovely walk around Central Park, which is so pretty.

After Central Park we strolled down 5^th Avenue looking at all the posh shops, and Nick committed the cardinal sin of stopping to take a CD from someone who seemed like they were “handing out free CDs just to be nice”.  This was not the case, as in fact after he had given Nick a signed copy of his CD, he then wanted a donation of 20 dollars.  We gave him 5 dollars and quickly made our escape.  Lesson learnt there.

We arranged to meet Daisy at 5.15 under the clock at Grand Central Station (just like in the films).  Once we’d located her, we went and had a burger and fries at Shake Shack, then Daisy showed us the whispering walls!  This is a really cool thing:  There is an arch in Grand Central Station where if you and another person stand against opposite sides about 10 metres away from each other and put your ears to the wall, you can have a conversation THROUGH THE WALLS!  

Daisy then took us to Johnny Utah’s – her favourite dive bar complete with mechanical bull.  Nick rode said bull extremely valiantly.  The video is on Facebook for those who need convincing.

Our lovely NYC host then took us to a very exclusive rooftop bar called 230 Fifth with amazing views of Manhattan.  We all put on red dressing gowns over our clothes to keep us warm.  This seemed odd and kind of cult-like at first, but soon proved to be an excellent idea.  We were very tired after an hour or so here, so we said bye to Daisy and her Mountbatten friend, Megan and made our way back on the Subway to Queens. 

A small side note here:  At the bar I met an English woman who lives in New Malden!  
5 minutes away from where we lived in Kingston!  Small world indeed.

Oh, and to finish with today, here is a picture of Nick standing next to a map of the New York subway system, while wearing his t-shirt depicting that same system.

The rest of the NYC tales to follow shortly :-)