Bears! At last we saw bears! All through Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, (and harbouring an outside hope in Tennessee) we wanted to see a bear. But today, two! Two grizzlies by the rocky stream, both curled up asleep. S presses her head against the glass. 'Wake up bears,' she says. They don't. It's a hot afternoon in New York and a lot of the animals at Central Park Zoo are rolling with their natural instincts and are sleeping. My natural instincts are telling me to do the same.
S has inherited E's knack for waking up at the crack of dawn on her birthday. She's very polite about it. 'Mummy, daddy,' she whispers, 'it's my birthday.' After a hug an an excellent rendition of happy birthday from E and me, she runs into the kitchen and sees the balloons and the medical tape banner and the cake and the few presents we've brought with us and from the bedroom we hear her say, 'Wow!' She opens her presents and plays with her new toys for a while. The little Mickey Mouse figurine ends up coming out with us for the day.
We head to Central Park Zoo. It's fairly small as zoos go but it's great. The bears are asleep and the snow leopard is a bit dozy but the two sea lions in the big pool which forms the centrepiece of the zoo are absolute show offs. One, presumably the young one, darts about the pool, leaping out of the water while the old lazes on the rocks, grinning at people just feet away from the edge of the pool. Feeding time is genuinely exciting and the two of them go nuts and S laughs her head off.
It's a beautiful day and Central Park is looking beautiful. We head to the fountain and the lake but can't bring ourselves to go much further. It's hot and walking through the park becomes hard work. We decide to head back to the street but even getting back out of the park is exhausting. I don't know why. Maybe it's because, unlike the rest of New York, the paths aren't flat or straight and sometimes you don't really know where you're going. It's like traipsing through a wasteland. But we get there and land in the top end of Broadway.
When the weather's good and you're in the tourist-y part of town, you don't half get hassled in New York. Everyone's out to sell you something, to trap you in conversation, then ask you for money. It's annoying because you can't switch off. But as long as you can so 'No thanks' and move on you can avoid getting sucked in. A hell of a lot of self made hip-hop albums are thrust towards my hands. I don't know what it is I'm putting out there. Maybe it's my swagger. My swag. Kids say that sort of thing in the Snipchats and Buzzword articles, right?
S gets the birthday ice cream she's been craving and has a great time both eating it and throwing it all over herself. The joy she takes in doing both is joyful in itself. In yet another trick of perspective, I accidentally took the best photo of my life today in which a buggy-bound S appears to be strangling a tiny woman. Here it is.
Our friend Paul is in town. He's a flight attendant for British Airways and by coincidence he's ended up here at the same time as us. Previous coincidence has seen us meeting him in Bangkok. We go for coffee in Grand Central, then take a walk looking for food where we all do the classic thing of mooching past several good eateries and deciding against them for no real reason. In the end, we decide that our last night in New York should be spent in an authentic and fairly seedy pizza joint which sells pizza by the slice. I fight the urge to buy a whole pizza and begrudgingly make do with a slice which is what Paul, E and S are doing. And it's a good thing. The slices are as big as S.
We leave Paul and had planned to head home. We spent so long in town yesterday, we figure we should get home earlier tonight. But E wants to go to Macy's and we decide tonight is a better time to do it than tomorrow and end up on 34th Street at sunset. The Empire State Building looks amazing and I take a ton of pictures. I work really hard and run miles down the street to get a shot of the sunlit tower with the moon in the background. Here it is. It probably doesn't look that impressive but it was grand to be there. E buys two pairs of trainers in the Macy's sale. I'm delighted about it because, being pregnant, she hasn't bought any clothes this holiday. The feet haven't changed shape at all.
We end up back home at about 10. S is still awake and still buzzing. I think it's been a good birthday. And it's been a great last full day in America.
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