Coffee Cup Stain

24 hours of travelling, and we finally made it to New York City, but those many hours of travelling wore us out, but fortunately, we didn’t get lost on the New York subway as we did on the Underground in London. 

 

We had a hard time figuring out what to do first, with all the art galleries, museums, Broadway shows and sightseeing, but we finally picked the zoo! We were staying at one of the top hotels in New York City, which we found to be an adventure in and of itself. The hotel had it’s own tour, but we thought we might take that tour later.

 

Our first cultural adjustment was to work out which was the correct way to put our Metro card in the slot to open up the barrier, it only took us an entire day to get it right. At the zoo, we were hoping to see lions, tigers and bears, but instead we saw tapirs, monkeys, kangaroos, some lizards, turtles, mice and one nun. After the zoo, we headed to 42nd Street, there was a man playing a saw and a man next to him dancing to the music, but he had his own tip box.

 

While we waited in a long queue to see the top of the Empire State Building, a family that stood in front of us quizzed us about the ratio of dogs to cats to rabbits in the average English household. The woman behind us quizzed us about the history of Wales ancestry. We weren’t expecting to answer questions from complete strangers, but fortunately for both parties, we had knowledge about both queries.

 

As we walked through Time Square in the evening, we overheard this conversation:

 

Mother: Come along, will you…

 

Son: Mum…

 

Mother: Do come along!

 

Son: Mum, I expect you don’t like me very much.

 

Mother: (silence)

 

The next day, we ended up in Brooklyn by accident, I guess we don’t know the subways better than the Underground.