Day 2 – Part 1 Getting started – aka The Zoo and Mad Eddie

Ok so Sunday was our first real day in New York and we were anxious to get started  (I can almost hear the Black Eyed Peas Radio edit)

Challenge 1 – Decide what to do

With so many options this was never going to be easy.  There are so many things that we wanted to do – it was hard to pick any one thing.  This decision was harder than it sounds.  I mean we had planned out what we wanted but had not bothered to allocate out days  to anything.  This had been a deliberate decision as we had not wanted to be tied down to anything, but rather we could do what we wanted when we wanted to.

Now both Rob and I can be quite bad at making decisions – especially when  there are a lot of things that we want to do.  Last night we had talked about a bus tour to help us get our bearings – by us I mean Rob, as I have the homing instinct of a broken boomerang (that is to say none what so ever – I can get lost outside of my own house – but that is an entirely different story).  After some more discussion and some wrangling with the mobiles (which still did not work by the way) we decided to put off the bus tour and head out to the Bronx Zoo for the day.  We figured that the zoo would be quiet so we could take our time and not be to overwhelmed.

Ok so that is challenge number one met in record time (about 20 minutes) – result for us.

Challenge 2 – find some where for breakfast and then try and get to the zoo

Finding something to eat in New York is not hard – you think of a type of cuisine and they will have it somewhere. This means that finding something to eat is never really a problem – but deciding what takes your fancy can be a bit more involved. For once though this was not going to be a challenge for us – we had already decided that for day one we wanted to have a breakfast like you always see in the movies. We wanted pancakes, bacon, maple syrup – the works! We spent a while wondering around Time square looking for somewhere that looked like it would be good. Eventually we turned up a small cafe where we could get what we were looking for along with some smoothie and coffee (a pre- requisite to warn of the chill). It was great but there was just so much of it – I mean you expect the portions to be large but this was just mad. We managed to eat most of it an knew that would be be us set for most of the day.

Its the small things

Looking at breakfast though you could see some of the cultural differences in the way we look at food. In the US there seems to be a lot of focus on value for money for the amount that you get. Portion sizes are massive and reasonably priced as well. Anyway when breakfast came with the maple syrup – it came in little packets like you often get jam in. They were not branded other than to say Kraft (the manufactures name) and it made me smile. If you get maple syrup over here you pay a lot more and it comes in some fancy bottle of a small jug and you pay for that. In New York it is just standard. Its the small things like that which catch you out.

I think some of the strangeness comes from the fact that everyone speaks the same language and you have some familiarity with it because you have seen it on the television and at the pictures so you are nice and comfy – and then some of the small things are not what you expect - and you are thrown