NEW YORK - Run mad, as often as you choose..

Despite being in and out of this city at least four times this year already, I actually hadn't spent much time in New York until this week. Which is a shame because, really, when you stop using it as a dropping off point between airports it has all sorts of exciting things in it that I've been wanting to do for a while. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge was one of them. Something I've been told to do by everyone who has ever lived in this city but which, well, just hadn't occured to me until I had a spare few hours after buying cheap tickets to Chicago (Tkts on Front/John Streets is the place to go for half price Broadway/off Broadway tickets. They have a kiosk in Time Square, too, but it's always mobbed. Less people make the trek down to the other office, despite the fact it opens earlier in the day)


New York in the evening is pretty. And kinda blue.

I also took a wander around the Museum of Modern Art after discovering that, on Friday evenings, it drops its rather silly $20 price tag and becomes a much more affordable free for all. That does mean the place gets more full than Disneyland: and all the white walls and floorboards in the world can't disguise the masses of people clamouring in front of every wall hanging. Thankfully, not everyone is as interested in photography of Death Valley as I am (sand and rocks... I know, I know) so it was a pleasant kind of evening with just me and a few very intense student types and their long camera lenses. Takes more than that to make me feel inadequate.


An installation where you can watch drunk British people drool over, hug and eventually fight each other. Frankly I prefer my variation: "Tourist Watching Drunk British People. In a New York Museum."

Brazil is two days away. I know where I'm going, I know a few words to say and I have a little bit of cash to spend when I get there. According to the handy spreadsheet info thing I received my hosts for the next few months don't have the Internet, but they do have a dog. Can't win them all, I guess. Updates as and when I can. Until then: Run mad, as often as you choose, but do not faint.