Day 11: Because you just can't have too much of Manhattan

We caught the Concierge's Bus Tour of Manhattan, which helped fill in a few of the gaps: the Rockefeller Centre, Wall Street, Greenwich Village, the Flatiron building, the Empire State Building (sadly, from ground level only), the site of the World Trade Center, and my favourite parking sign of all time:

We also had the most disgusting pretzel in the history of humanity, a lukewarm pasty faux-cheese filled monstrosity that should be sealed in concrete and dropped into the mid-Atlantic.

We also stopped at Battery Park to look at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the primary arrival point for immigrants to the US in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Apparently seconds after I set off for the men’s room a squirrel popped up a few feet away from Emma and drank from a drinking fountain. Scheming little bastards.

Since Emma was having such a good time in New York she decided to ruin it a bit. After we returned to the room she tried to move furniture with her toenail, ripping it off in the process. This meant I had to do an emergency run to the 24 hour pharmacy to buy a set of nail clippers, band-aids and antiseptic crème. In true American fashion there were 172 different kinds of band-aids, none of which were what I was looking for.

Fortunately the damage wasn’t as serious as it first looked. We only had to amputate the lower half of the foot.

Our last night was spent dining with Jeff at Rosie O'Grady's, where I took great satisfaction in offending both Jeff and our waiter when I asked if the New York Cheesecake was shipped in from New Jersey. Heheheheheh.

(For the sake of the Aussies, this was like suggesting that Australian beer was shipped in from New Zealand.)

Emma’s foot held up well enough for us to walk back to the Westin. We must have begun to look like locals as nobody tried to sell us anything .