Blog 6^th October

 Last night at the Beacon Theatre, next door to the hotel, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was appearing, sold out for the past six  month so no chance of tickets!  However we did see his equipment arriving, no I don’t mean as in the late 1960s photo of him on one leg in very tight trousers!  His amps and stage stuff, delivered from a truck half a block long, they don’t do half measures here.

This morning travelled down to Greenwich Village and walked through the market resisted the record stalls despite rare 60s albums and went for a coffee at Reggio’s   the oldest café in New York.  They claim to have invented the cappuccino here,  great coffee however.  Then on to China Town, some spiritual rejuvenation in a Buddhist temple and lunch at the bar of a trattatoria in Little Italy served by the surliest bar man I have ever met.  I don’t like stereo-types but if you were looking for a surly  New York American-Italian he was everything you could ever hope for.  “Ya wanna drink”  then when asked if they did sandwiches, “No”  then after I found a menu and asked can we get a pizza “yeah  but you’ll have to wait I’m busy” and so on.

In the afternoon we walked the Brooklyn Bridge, certainly one of the best free things you can do, great views all the way across.  In the evening we met up with Mike and Linda.  Bad start as instead of waiting at the Trump Tower precinct on 5^th we waited at the Trump Hotel on Central Park, should have realised we were wrong when we saw that it was a 3* Michelin restaurant! Ended up eating fish in an excellent diner.