Unfortunately, the heavy morning rain scuppered our plans once again. Chris still isn’t feeling 100% either, and wanted to take things a bit easier. Instead of major sightseeing (Statue of Liberty), we decided to get off the subway earlier than usual, and took a stroll around downtown Manhattan, through Chinatown, SoHo, Little Italy, NoLIta and NoHo. It was nice to see a side of New York other than the madness and shine of central Manhattan, with little shops and cafes, market stalls in Chinatown, NYU, and changing neighbourhoods. Some of them do blur into one a little - how do you tell the difference between SoHo and NoHo other than the dividing Houston Road? I don’t think I could!

We got onto the subway again at Union Square, and headed back into Central Manhattan for lunch, before taking advantage of the much diminished rain to go and have another wander around Central Park. All we saw last time was the south west corner on our way to the Natural History Museum, so there was still loads of it to see. We focused on the south east / central / eastern area, and walked up the Mall to Bethesda Fountain, rambled through the Ramble, skirted around the back of the Lake and found the Boathouse, and walked back via the Carousel (closed, unfortunately), to exit around 61st street on the eastern side.

I found out this morning that there was a Couchsurfing meetup planned for Wednesday, so we decided to change our plans and go to the Comedy Club today instead. It wasn’t until 9pm, so we had around six hours to kill. Finding ourselves in Times Square - which still dazzles me every time I see it - we stopped into the Coldstone Creamery for some gorgeous icecream, and nipped into the cinema for the second time in the week to watch 30 Days of Night. Vampire movie, many townspeople die, gets very silly indeed towards the end. Neatly killed some time, though. We went to find food downtown and got diverted into a huge Barnes and Noble bookstore for 45 minutes or so, and had just enough time to grab a quick McDonalds before we had to catch the subway back uptown to get to Broadway.

What we hadn’t been told when we bought the tickets for the show was that reservations should be made in advance - having the ticket isn’t enough, you then have to phone and book a seat. Luckily, we were only the second group on the reserves list, and we were ushered into the show a good 10 minutes before it started. The other caveat on the ticket that we had known about was the 2 drink minimum. Bar staff came around and took our orders, and brought the drinks to the tables, very welcomed as it saved gathering around the bar. There were six comedians, including the emcee, and the show lasted a good 2.5 hours. I’d never heard of any of them before, but all bar one were extremely funny. The one I didn’t find so funny still got laughs, but just wasn’t to my taste. Far and away the best was a comedian called Erik Rivera, who had us all in stitches with his race / ethnicity inspired monologues. Towards the end of the night, the bar staff brought round the bill for each group, and it was here that Chris and I discovered how they can sell discounted tickets. For a bottle of Bud Lite and three Cokes, the bill came to $29.07. This included $8 for the Bud (£4 for a bottle of American beer!!!), and $5 (£2.50) each for the Cokes. There was also an obligatory gratuity of just over $4 added to the bill, and tax of $2-ish. Chris and I were disgusted. Talking to a friend of his in San Jose online later, Chris discovered that comedy clubs do generally make their money through the price of drinks. Well… at least the comedy was great.

By the time we’d got back to 7th and 57th to catch a train, it was almost midnight. The journey back to Brooklyn was as long as ever. We finally got in at just after 1am - a long day!