Bright Lights, Big City

Ice Skating In Central Park
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New York Times Square is just bedlham. You can tell this is the major tourist area. Today we decide to do some hop-on-hop-off bus travelling - not a lot of hopping-off happenning though. We ride the Uptown then the Downtown loop and then get off at one end of Central Park. We decided to do the tourist thing and take a carriage ride with one of the less-malnourished horses. Paula is busting to use the restroom, so the driver stops and tells her to run across the road and use the facilities in Micky Mantels restaurant.

Carriage Ride in Central Park
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One of the last things we do is a our Soul Food and Jazz tour. We take a bus ride through Harlem and then stop at Sylvia's Cafe for dinner. We have Corn Bread, Fried Fish, Collard Greens, Fried Chicken, Spare Ribs, Spicy Rice, Potato Salad and then some type of sickly sweet apricot pudding.

That's great Jazz man..

After this we piled on the bus and went off to a Jazz bar called Showmans. Here we listned to some white fellas play jazz for a while. We were really expecting these guys to be black dudes. At about 11pm, the Thursday night tap revival night started where a procession of impressive soul tap dancers let it rip on the small stage. This was just fantastic to see wht they could do with their feet. It was then sadly time to go as our tour leader pulled us out of the bar. We would have liked to have stayed.

Time Square at Night
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With only 4 hrs left in NewYork, it was time to pack and get in a couple of hours rest before heading off to JFK for our trip to London.