I think I’ve mentioned that I’d love to move to New York. Manhattan’s a little more expensive than I expected, but I think I’ve worked out a feasible plan for survival. Here’s the breakdown of expenditures (assuming a salary of $2000 a month) for a one-bedroom apartment in the East Village:

My favorite show finally gets its props!

This morning we got up early. We ambled outside with our bulky bags and waited for our shared-ride bus thingie. It was raining, naturally, so we stood under the hotel awning. A friendly old man (who may have been tipsy) teased me: "If your mother knew you were outside in a sleeveless blouse on a day like this, she'd give it to you good! Am I right? Am I right? Ha ha!" He was great, but then he and another old fellow took off in pursuit of two older ladies at the end of the block, tapping their canes and laughing about the conquest. The bus was half an hour late—we were in the process of hailing a cab when its smiling grill came around the corner. It was a quick, harrowing ride to LaGuardia as the bus clattered down brick streets and sailed across the bridge, barely missing a thousand obstructions. Didn't take nearly as long as the ride to the hotel.

We went walking this morning and ended up at the U.N. building. The whole set-up is pretty impressive, what with the long row of national flags outside and the building itself rising like a monolith against the sky. Name-tagged delegates were filing in and out. A man came up to Nick and started chattering in Russian. There were some great sculptures outside, including this one:

This morning we took the subway down to the site of the Trade Centers. I didn't take pictures, and I don't feel like writing about it, except to say that I felt like I shouldn't be there. Afterward, we walked around Wall Street and saw the New York Stock Exchange. The original area is much smaller than I expected. I kept looking for Michael Douglas carrying that gigantic mobile phone he had in that movie, but all we saw was a boatload of fancy suits and some group that was protesting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Morning: Central Park. It's much, much bigger than I was expecting, with an atmosphere that is part play and part pure relaxation. Putting this lush park in the middle of New York is the best bit of feng shui imaginable. Lots of families and sunbathers and business people, just enjoying a few moments away from the bustling crowds. We walked for several hours, and ended up at the John Lennon "Imagine" mosaic, which was a re-creation of a mosaic found at the ruins of Pompeii. It was covered in flowers and surrounded by tourists.

We did better on the subway today. A few wrong guesses, but mostly everything was right on track. One thing I do not get is how so many women wear tiny spindly high-heeled shoes when they have to trek up and down the gajillion steps in the cavernous metro system. One time, we found ourselves stepping off a subway car only to go up four extremely long sets of stairs to get to the surface. We must have been close to the center of the earth. Subterranean homesick blues indeed.

People in New York are much nicer than they are reputed to be. They don't ordinarily make eye contact, but I've found that if you approach them with big, helpless tears streaming down your face and beg them for directions, they are more than happy to accommodate you.